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FEB 21 1920 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

TT THEN Theodore Roosevelt passed away January 
^ ^ 6, 1919, he was sixty years and about two 
months old. , Nearly forty years of that time 
had been spent actively and vigorously in the public 
service. He unquestionably was one of the great Ameri- 
cans of his time. He won international fame as a states- 
man and was known throughout the world for his 
unusual versatility in politics, literature and science. 
As an author he early attracted attention and his rare 
faculty of leadership and achie\'ement in public affairs 
impressed itself upon his fellow citizens throughout a 
busy career. 

Unlike many Americans who have won distinction, 
Mr. Roosevelt was not bom in humble circumstances. 
His parents were among the well-to-do in New York 
city, his native place. His career was all the more won- 
derful because in early youth he was far from being 
robust. A fervent desire to serve the common people 
v/as not inspired by his early environment because his 
associations were those of the wealthy and not of the 
more humble folk with whom he delighted to mingle and 
to serve. 

He was bom in New York city October 27, 1858. 
On his father's side, whose mother was of Irish descent, 
he was also descended from a Dutch immigrant of the 

5 



Theodore Roosevelt 

seventeenth century. His progenitors were nearly all 
New Yorkers. Although prominent at all times in the 
commercial and social life of the city, there is no record 
of Mr. Roosevelt's Dutch progenitors in New York city 
having achieved distinction in public office. 

Theodore Roosevelt's father was Theodore Roose- 
velt, son of Cornelius Van Schaick Roosevelt, and the 
family line goes back to medieval times in Dutch history. 
His mother was Miss Bullock of Georgia, daughter of 
James Dunwoodie Bullock, one of a family whose founder 
came to this country from Scotland in the middle of the 
seventeenth century. Her great-grandfather was the 
first Revolutionary Governor of the State, and her 
brother fired the last shot from the Alabama as she 
sunk off Cherbourg under the guns of the old Kearsarge. 
Governor Roosevelt's early education was received at 
Cutler's private school, a famous institution in New 
York. He entered Harvard at the age when young men 
are supposed to enter upon college life. At Cambridge 
he studied hard and took an unceasing interest in philos- 
ophy, history and government. The foundation for his 
literary career was laid there. He began by writing 
for the Harvard Advocate of which he became editor. 
Mr. Roosevelt did not spend all his time in his studies. 
He entered heartily into all the college sports; he sprinted, 
wrestled, sparred and played polo. In his youth he was 
sickly and " pigeon-chested," and he therefore regarded 
it as one of his first duties to make himself physically 
strong. 

6 



Theodore Roosevelt 

"I made my health what it is," he said. "I deter- 
mined to be strong and well and did everything to make 
myself so. I wrestled and sparred a great deal at col- 
lege, and though I never came in first I got more out 
of the exercise than those who did, because I enjoyed 
and never injured myself. I was very fond of wrestling 
and boxing. I think I was a good deal of a wrestler, 
and though I never won a championship, yet more than 
once I won my trial heats and got into the final heat. 
I was captain of my polo team at one time, but since 
I left college I have taken most of my exercise in the 
'cow country' or hunting game in the mountains." 

He especially excelled as a boxer when at Harvard, 
and was the champion light-weight boxer in that college, 
and was always ready to " put on the gloves " with any 
other fellow student. 

After his graduation from Harvard, Mr. Roosevelt 
made a trip to Europe. This was in 1880. There, not 
content with " doing " the continent in the orthodox 
way, he roughed it, ascending the Jungfrau and Matter- 
horn, tramped through the country districts of Germany 
and became tolerably familiar with peasant life. 

Upon his return to the United States he resolved, 
if possible, to become a member of the Legislature, and 
began taking an active part in political work, as a 
Republican, in his assembly district, the twenty-first of 
New York city. He quickly became a leader, and 
finally, in 1881, was nominated for the Assembly by the 
Republican party in the twenty-first district and was 
elected over his Democratic opponent to the Assembly 
of 1882. He put himself at the head of a body of 

7 



Theodore Roosevelt 

assemblymen, Republicans and Democrats, who were 
resolved that there should be reformation in some of the 
evils from which the government of New York State was 
suffering. Bill after bill was offered for this purpose, 
some of which received the approval of the Legislature 
and some did not. Speaker Patterson named him as 
a member of the committee on cities and he rendered 
great services to his constituency in that position. 

In 1883 Mr. Roosevelt was once more an assembly- 
man; Alfred C. Chapin, Democrat, was speaker. Mr. 
Roosevelt was placed second on the cities committee 
by the Democratic speaker. During this session of the 
Legislature, Grover Cleveland, Democrat, was governor. 
It was here that Mr. Roosevelt first met Mr. Cleveland. 
A vigorous effort was made to secure the passage of 
a five-cent fare bill on the elevated railroads of New 
York city. The bill passed. To the amazement of 
everybody, Governor Cleveland vetoed it. When the 
veto was presented in the Assembly, Mr. Roosevelt, 
then 24 years old, made this remarkable speech: 

" I have to say with shame that when I voted for this 
bill, I did not act as I ought to have acted, and as 
I generally have acted on the floor of this house, for 
the only time that I ever voted here, aside from what 
I think to be exactly right, I did that time. I have to 
confess that I weakly yielded to a vindictive spirit toward 
the infernal thieves who have that railroad in charge, 
and to the voice of New York. For the managers of the 
elevated railroads I have as little feeling as any man here, 
and if it were possible I would be willing to pass a bill 
of attainder against the officials of that road. I realize 

8 



Theodore Roosevelt 

that they have done the most incalculable harm to this 
community — with their hired newspaper, with their 
corruption of the judiciary and with their corruption of 
this house. Nevertheless, I think that we ought never 
to have passed this bill in the beginning, and that we 
ought never to pass it over the veto now, and certainly 
not until we have had a fair chance to look at it purely 
in the light of reason. I question if the bill is con- 
stitutional, and if the bill is constitutional, I think it is, 
in any event, breaking the plighted faith of the State. 
It isn't a question of doing right to them, for they are 
merely common thieves. As to the resolution — a peti- 
tion handed by the directors of the company — I would 
pay more attention to a petition signed by Barney Arron, 
Owney Geoghagan or Billy McGlory than I would pay 
to that paper, because I regard these men as a part of 
an infinitely dangerous order of men — the wealthy 
criminal class." 

This speech caused considerable amazement, and 
numerous members arose denouncing Mr. Roosevelt's 
allusion to corruption in the house. 

Some days after this speech Mr. Roosevelt introduced 
a resolution annulling the charter of the Manliattan 
railroad; but it failed to pass. 

The Assembly of 1884 was Republican. Mr. Roose- 
velt was again a member; Titus Sheard of Herkimer, 
Republican, was the speaker. iVIr. Roosevelt was placed 
at the head of the committee on cities, and he at this 
time secured the appointment of a committee to investi- 
gate the affairs of the government of New York city. 
A special committee was appointed, Mr. Roosevelt being 
9 



Theodore Roosevelt 

appointed chairman. One of the results of the investi- 
gation was the presentation of a bill taking away from 
the aldermen of New York the confirmatory power of 
appointments made by the mayor. During a prolonged 
and fierce conflict over this bill, Mr. Roosevelt made 
many characteristic speeches. In one of them he said: 
" Nobody supposes for a moment that the aldermen act 
for themselves, and although I would not say it would be 
well for the city, it would be no worse for the city if they 
did act for themselves, but they are confessedly simply 
the tools of men who stand behind them. They have 
nothing to do but register the decrees that those in 
authority over them choose to issue. Since the beginning 
of this session we have seen the consummation of one of 
the most disgraceful deals that has ever disgraced even 
the board of aldermen. I regret to say four of the 
aldermen, nominally of the party to which I belong, 
deliberately sold their votes. These four aldermen never 
should have the slightest right to take part in the 
proceedings of any Republican primary. They have 
made themselves Democrats for hire. We complain very 
loudly about a poor man who sells his vote for a dollar 
or two; but what should we say of a man who sells his 
vote for a chairmanship of one committee or for the sake of 
two or three places, for a clerkship, for instance? I think 
the so-called respectable people of New York have many 
of the gravest political sins on their shoulders. They 
are responsible for most of our bad government. The 
better people of New York are responsible for having 
let the rogues have their way." 

The report made by Mr. Roosevelt's committee as to 

10 



Theodore Roosevelt 

the condition of affairs in the offices of the county clerk, 
the register, the surrogate and the sheriffs offices in 
New Yorlv, disclosed evils which led him to introduce 
reformatory bills in regard to them all. In three bills 
introduced by him it was proposed to make the county 
clerk, the register and the sheriff salaried officials and 
to turn over their fees to the city of New York. Two of 
these bills were passed by the Legislature and signed by 
Governor Cleveland, and have since been laws of the 
State. 

The same year, 1884, the Assembly was asked to 
pass a general railroad act, under which it was proposed 
to build a street railway in Broadway, New York. It 
was opposed by a corporation which wished to gridiron 
the city with cable railroads. When Mr. Roosevelt came 
to vote upon the bill, he said: 

" Everyone who knows anything about the legislation 
knows that the presence of certain men who have been 
around this chamber for the last few days, for and against 
the measure, bodes no good for honest and efficient 
legislation." He said, " he stood between the devil and 
the deep sea. That it was a case of that he would be 
damned if he did and damned if he did not. If he voted 
for the bill he would be accused of corrupt motives, and 
if he voted against it the same charge would be made." 
He asked to be excused from voting, but this being 
denied him, he voted against the bill. 

In 1884 Mr. Roosevelt also entered national politics. 

He advocated the nomination of George F. Edmunds for 

president, and was elected one of New York's delegates- 

at-large to the Republican national convention of that 

11 



Theodore Roosevelt 

year, leading the delegation. At the convention he was 
a notable figure. 

Retiring from public life for a time in 1884, Mr. 
Roosevelt bought a ranch in western Dakota, near 
Medera, on the Little Missouri river. It was not his first 
visit to this part of the United States. He went west at 
a time when the last of the buffalo were going down before 
the " big hunts." The lAinters he passed in the Legis- 
lature, and at the beginning of the long summers he 
migrated to the "Bad Lands" and shot elk, deer, 
buffalo and antelope. He made two hunting trips, one 
in 1883, the last big hunt near Butte, when the whites 
and Sioux from Standing Rock and Pine Ridge were 
doing the Icilling. Mr. Roosevelt started his cattle ranch 
in 1884, and from 1884 until he was appointed civil 
service commissioner he passed all his summers in the 
west and his winters in New York. 

" I was never happier in my life," he said afterward. 
" My house out there is a long, low house of hewn logs, 
which I helped to build myself. It has a broad veranda 
and rocking chairs and a big fireplace, and elk skins and 
wolf skins scattered about — on the brink of the Little 
Missouri, right in a clump of cottonwoods; and less than 
three years ago I shot a deer from the veranda." 

It was there in the west, where he mingled with the 
cowboys and saw nature in all its simplicity, that Mr. 
Roosevelt got his inspiration for several of the works 
that have since come from his pen. In his book called 
" Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail," he describes most 
interestingly the adventurous life he led as a ranchman 
and hunter. 

12 



Theodore Roosevelt 

In 1886 Mr. Roosevelt was nominated by the 
Republicans, although only twenty-eight years old, as 
their candidate for mayor of New York city. Abram S. 
Hewitt was the Democratic nominee and Henry George 
was the candidate on the Labor and Independent ticket. 
Mr. Hewitt was elected, Mr. George was second in the 
race and Mr. Roosevelt third. 

In 1889 President Benjamin A. Harrison appointed 
Mr. Roosevelt a civil service commissioner, and he 
acted in that capacity for six years, from May, 1889, to 
May, 1895, which included the administration of President 
Harrison and the second one of Grover Cleveland. 
During his term the merit system was extended for many 
departments and employees of the Federal service, due 
largely to the earnestness and enthusiasm of Commissioner 
Roosevelt. 

Upon his retirement from the civil service com- 
mission, Mayor Strong of New York city appointed him 
a member of the board of police of New York. In this 
office, as in all of the others which he held, he made for 
himself a reputation for thoroughness and efficiency. 
His aim was to elevate the police department to a higher 
standard; to enforce the laws against gambling and to 
suppress disreputable resorts. 

Governor William McKinley of Ohio was elected 
president of the United States in 1898. Mr. Roosevelt 
was urged by some of his friends as a man well qualified 
to be secretary of the navy, but Mr. McKinley had already 
promised the place to John D. Long of Massachusetts, 
and finally Mr. Roosevelt was appointed assistant 
secretary. 

13 



Theodore Roosevelt 

One of the achievements of Assistant Secretary 
Roosevelt was the fitting out of Admiral George Dewey's 
squadron of ships just after he had been ordered to 
Manila Bay, on the Philadelphia. The great victory of 
Dewey over the Spaniards in the spring of 1898 was due 
in no small measure to the foresight of this act of the 
assistant secretary of the navy. 

The beginning of the Spanish War of 1898 found 
Mr. Roosevelt still assistant secretary of the navy, but 
he resolved to resign his position and enter the United 
States Army. Chauncey M. Depew, later referring to 
this period in Mr. Roosevelt's life, said: " The wife of 
a cabinet officer told me that when Assistant Secretary 
Roosevelt announced that he had determined to resign 
and raise a regiment for the war, some of the ladies 
in the administration circle thought it their duty to 
remonstrate with him. They said: 'Mr. Roosevelt 
you have six children, the youngest a few months old 
and the eldest not yet in the teens. While the country 
is full of young men who have no such responsibilities 
and are eager to enlist, you have no right to leave the 
burden upon your wife of the care, support and bring- 
ing up of that family.' Roosevelt's answer was a Roose- 
velt answer: ' I have done as much as any one to 
bring on this war, because I believed it must come, and 
the sooner the better, and now that the war is declared, 
I have no right to ask others to do the fighting and stay 
at home myself.' " 

Mr. Roosevelt raised a regiment of cavalry of rough 
riders; instead of heading the regiment himself, he asked 
President McKinley to appoint his personal friend, 

14 



Theodore Roosevelt 

Dr. Leonard Wood, a West Point graduate, as colonel, 
while he asked for himself the office of lieutenant-colonel. 

The regiment was raised at San Antonio, Texas, from 
among the mining prospectors, cowboys and hunters of 
the southwest. They were the hardy men of the plains, 
accustomed to living in the open air and skilled in the 
use of the rifle. Roosevelt added to the regiment some 
college men who had won laurels in the athletic fields. 

The first fight that Colonel Roosevelt and his 
exceptional regiment were engaged in was at La Guasimas, 
near Santiago, where the first guns for Cuba's freedom 
were fired. It was on the afternoon of June 23 when 
General WTieeler, who was in command of the troops 
ashore, was notified that the enemy was entrenched at 
La Guasimas, cutting oflf all connection with Santiago. 
At Siboney, which the Rough Riders had reached by 
making forced marches at night, it was determined to 
make the attack on the following morning. That night 
was a restless one for the Rough Riders. At five o'clock 
in the morning they made the ascent of the steep ridge 
above Siboney, and started toward the rendezvous on 
the trail to the west. As they were dismounted and 
heavily burdened with blankets, robes, haversacks, 
ammunition and carbines, the march under the hot sun 
was slow and painful. It was not long before Colonel 
Wood of the Rough Riders, returning from a trip down 
the trail to meet Captain Capron of the artillery, passed 
the word back to Roosevelt to keep silence in the ranks. 
A halt was made at a place flanked on one side by a barb- 
wire fence and on the other by fields of high grass, under- 
growth and tangled trees, which were almost impenetrable. 

15 



Theodore Roosevelt 

After reconnoitering, Colonel Wood returned and 
began deploying his troops out at either side of the trail. 
Capron was sent on ahead and the other troops stationed 
to good advantage. They took their position none too 
soon, for the enemy began firing immediately. The 
Rough Riders fought their way through the bushes in the 
direction from which the volleys came; it was a tremendous 
task, for the thicket was very dense. They soon broke 
through into a little open space and the men fell on one 
knee and began firing rapidly into the space where they 
supposed the Spaniards were concealed. The enemy's 
fire was hot and not more than fifty to eighty yards away. 
The Rough Riders were forced to lie flat in the grass and 
in the hottest of the fight Colonel Roosevelt ran up and 
lay down beside Captain Llewylan of Troop G, and 
eagerly talked with him. Roosevelt pointed out that it 
was impossible to go any further on accoimt of the 
underwood of wild grapevines that screened the Spaniards. 
He advised that the men cross the trail and move to 
the left. Meanwhile the firing of the enemy was fast 
and accurate, for in three minutes' time nine men were 
disabled. The Riders went slowly to the left, and as the 
aim of the enemy was low they were compelled to move 
on their knees and crawl on their stomachs. After an 
hour's fighting the American line had reached a more 
open country. Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt moved his 
men with the intention of taking an old distiller>^ occupied 
by the enemy and a short distance from them. The 
advance was made by short rushes, the men firing as 
they ran. Roosevelt and his men showed the stuff they 
were made of during this manoeuvre. Bullets whizzed 

16 



Theodore Roosevelt 

close to them, so close in several instances that they left 
a scar on the soldier's skin. One bullet struck a tree 
next to Colonel Roosevelt, scattered and filled his eyes 
and ears with the tiny splinters. Finally the firing from 
the enemy became less fierce, and Roosevelt, who had 
picked up a carbine which he fired occasionally to give 
directions to the others, decided to make a charge. The 
men broke out of the bushes behind the trees, cheering 
wildly, and were met by volley after volley from the 
enemy, but they rushed on, cheering. This extra- 
ordinary exhibition of courage so dismayed the Spaniards 
that they hurriedly retreated upon Santiago. In all, 
there were 534 Rough Riders, and these men succeeded 
in dispersing four times their own number of the enemy 
entrenched safely behind rifle pits and bushes. This 
fight of the Rough Riders will go down in history as 
being one of the most daring exhibitions of bravery that 
is recorded. 

The taking of San Juan Hill and the part played in 
that memorable engagement by the Rough Riders will 
live in history long after those who participated in it 
have gone to their final resting-place. 

After leaving La Guasimas, Colonel Roosevelt said 
in his speech to his fellow citizens at Oyster Bay, on 
returning from Cuba, " We moved up to Santiago, and 
camped on a hillside with a ridge in front of us. At dawn 
our artillery got on that ridge and opened fire. That 
was fine music to us, but pretty soon the Spaniards 
began to reply, and instead of dislodging our artillery 
they shot over it, and the shrapnel came at us. Of 
course, they didn't mean to hit us, because they couldn't 

17 



Theodore Roosevelt 

see us, but that was like the Spaniards. Well, while 
Generals Lawton and Chaffee were pounding away at 
El Caney we were ordered to take the blockhouses on 
the hills. We went through the jungle in a hurry, forded 
the river and were then halted for an hour under heavy 
fire. I see by the papers that there has been some talk 
as to whether we took San Juan Hill or not. I don't 
know whether we did. We didn't stop to ask the name 
of the hill — we just took it. 

" The most trying part of it all was that wait, though, 
for the men were being shot down like sheep. I recollect 
giving an order to an orderly. He rose and saluted, then 
fell dead across my knees. I saw Captain Buck O'Neill 
walking up and down in front of his men. One of them 
said: * Lie down, Captain; you'll be hit.' He laughed 
and said: * The Spanish bullet has not been made that 
can kill me.' The next minute he fell dead, a bullet 
hole through the head. He was a man of absolute 
courage, and one of the finest soldiers and men I ever 
have known. 

" We finally got our orders to go ahead, and then 
began my crowded hour of glorious life, an hour I wouldn't 
exchange for all the rest of my life. It is pleasant to 
remember how the men behaved that day. I saw 
thirteen wounded men refuse to go to the rear, and 
I recall a new Mexican cow-puncher who was shot in the 
side, and whom I ordered to the hospital myself. Twenty 
minutes later he was at the front rank fighting again. 
After the fight he went to the hospital and had his wound 
dressed. While lying on a cot he heard the surgeon say 
that he was to be shipped home. That night he jumped 

18 



Theodore Roosevelt 

out of the hospital window and came back to camp. 
He fought with the regiment from then on." 

Upon his return to the United States and while 
still in camp with his regiment at Montauk Pc^int, Long 
Island, Mr. Roosevelt was nominated for governor of 
New York State. He was nominated at the Republican 
State convention and elected over Judge Augustus Van 
Wyck the Democratic candidate by a plurality of 17,794. 

While serving his second year as governor, Mr. 
Roosevelt was nominated, against his will, for vice- 
president with President McKinley, at the Philadelphia 
convention. It has always been stated by some of his 
friends that this nomination was intended to " shelve " 
him politically. The following year, 1901, President 
McKinley was assassinated at the Pan-American expo- 
sition, Buffalo, and Mr. Roosevelt succeeded to the 
presidency. At the conclusion of that term, 1904, he 
was nominated and elected president by the largest 
majority every given to a candidate in any presidential 
election. 

Largely through his influence William H. Taft was 
nominated and elected to succeed him in 1908. Mr. 
Roosevelt, on account of serious difficulties with Presi- 
dent Taft refused to support him for renomination and 
election. After failing to receive the Republican nomi- 
nation himself at the Chicago convention in 1912, he 
was nominated for the office by the Progressive conven- 
tion. This split in the Republican party resulted in the 
election of Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate. 

In 1916 Roosevelt was again a candidate for presi- 
dent in the Republican convention. When Charles E. 

19 



Theodore Roosevelt 

Hughes was made the nominee he declined to be a can- 
didate on the Progressive ticket and supported Mr. 
Hughes. 

Charles Willis Thompson of the editorial staff of the 
New York Tmes and for many years a correspondent 
for New York city dailies at Washington, was an inti- 
mate friend of Colonel Roosevelt. Few newspapermen 
have followed Mr. Roosevelt's career so closely as Mr. 
Thompson. From time to time he has written of inter- 
esting incidents which came to his knowledge of the 
Colonel's sayings and doings. Since his death, Mr. 
Thompson has related some of these incidents in the 
Times. One of them he writes as follows: 

" It was always strange to me to see how the solemn 
profundities and the unco' guid among our population 
used to regard this trait of his as something discreditable 
to him. He received visits from John L. Sullivan at the 
White House ! He entertained Booker Washington there ! 
He was a friend of boxers and actors! With what a sneer 
would they pronounce the words, 'Jack Abemathy, the 
wolf-killer,' and * Bill Sewall, a guide ' in listing Roose- 
velt's friends. Mean minds, imagining that a man would 
not do anything except for advantage, cast about for 
Roosevelt's motive. It must be that he had a motive; 
by which they meant a selfish one. They hit on it — 
it was spectacular drama to impress the crowd, or 
demagogic ostensible democracy to get votes. It was not 
possible to suppose that he actually liked these boxers 
and wolf-killers and reporters and wanted to be with them. 

" They would have been still more scandalized if they 
had heard what he said to me, and to other people, too, 

20 



Theodore Roosevelt 

I suppose, at a time when a steady stream of corpora- 
tion magnates was flowing in at the Wliite House doors: 

" ' It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a 
man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a 
man worth hearing; but as a rule they don't know any- 
thing outside of their own business. You would be 
astonished to know how small their range is and how 
little they can talk about what an intelligent person 
wants to hear.' " 

In his literary work Mr. Roosevelt was as varied 
as in his political activities. While in the Legislature 
and a young man of only twenty-four, he wrote The 
Naval War of 1812 which told the story of Commodore 
Macdonough's victory on Lake Champlain and of the 
victory of Commodore Perry on Lake Erie. 

After he had spent several years in the West on a 
ranch, he wrote Hunting Trips of a Ranchman which 
appeared in 1885 and The Wilderness Hunter in 1893. 

His historical work in 1896, under the title of The 
Winning of the West, is an extensive description of the 
development of that section of the United States west 
of the Mississippi river. He was an enthusiastic lover 
of the great West. Its origin and growth were studied 
by him in every detail and he had become intimate with 
its spirit by living in it and going through its pioneer 
experiences. 

American Ideals, in which Mr. Roosevelt discussed 
social and political problems, appeared in 1904 — the 
year that he was nominated and elected president of 
the United States. Other works of his on widely dif- 
ferent topics have appeared from time to time. His 

21 



Theodore Roosevelt 

autobiography written several years before his death is 
a voluminous and interesting contribution to American 
history since it deals with a period of great events through 
which the nation passed. He was a prolific contributor 
also to magazines, newspapers and other periodicals, 
especially since he retired from the presidency in 1909. 

Mr. Roosevelt was twice married. In 1881 he mar- 
ried Miss Alice Lee of Boston. She died in 1884, leaving 
an infant daughter, Alice Lee, now the wife of Represen- 
tative Nicholas Longworth of Ohio. 

In 1886 Colonel Roosevelt married Edith Carow of 
New York, by whom he had five children. They are 
Theodore, Kermit, Ethel, Archibald B. and Quentin. 
The latter was killed in the World War in July, 1918, 
when he was over the German lines in a combat air- 
plane. All of the Colonel's sons were in that war. 

For more than thirty years Mr. Roosevelt had his 
home at Oyster Bay, Long Island. It is known as 
Sagamore Hill which commands a view of Oyster Bay 
on Long Island Sound. 



22 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE LEGISLATURE 



ON THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF 



THE DEATH OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



January 8, 1919 



PROCLAMATION 

STATE OF NEW YORK 

Executive Chamber 

Albany, January 6, 1919 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, a distinguished citizen of this State 
and known throughout the world, is dead. 

Formerly a Governor of New York State, later Vice-President 
and then President of the nation, we should unite in appropriate marks 
of respect to the memory of one who for so many years was a leading 
figure in all things which had to do with the welfare of the nation. 

It is proper that official recognition of the loss of one of our native 
sons of so much prominence be fittingly expressed in a manner due to 
the character and services of the deceased. 

NOW, THEREFORE I, Alfred E. Smith, Governor of the State 
of New York, do hereby order the flag placed at half mast on all public 
buildings of the State until after the final obsequies. 

Given under my hand and the Privy 
Seal of the State at the Capitol in 
the City of Albany this sixth day 
[l.S.1 of January in the year of our 

Lord one thousand nine hundred 
and nineteen. 



(Signed) 



^^..^^z//^- 



By the Governor; 

George R. V.-\n Namee, 
Secrelarv to the Governor. 



25 



PROCEEDINGS IN THE SENATE 

January 8, 1919 

At the session of the Senate, January 8. 1919, 
Lieut.-Gov. Harry C. Walker presiding, a resolution was 
adopted in memory of Theodore Roosevelt. Several of 
the Senators delivered brief addresses in memory of the 
deceased. 

Senator J. Henry Walters of Syracuse, President 
pro tem, spoke as follows: 

This nation has suffered irreparable loss. In the 
death of Theodore Roosevelt we have lost a citizen 
who personified the highest type of Americanism. I feel 
that our loss is all the greater at this time because now 
that we are entering the peace period his advice and 
counsel would have been so helpful to the nation and to 
its people. His name is reverently upon the lips of every 
citizen of this country. 

Mr. President, I offer the following resolution, and 
move its adoption: 

Welding into one dynamic personality the rare qualities of aristocracy 
of both education and training with an all-pervading democracy of both 
thought and action, uniting the ripe judgment of the scholar and philoso- 
pher with the keen foresight of the visionary; firm and unyielding to 
the point of hardness, yet cloaking refusal and rebuke with such evident 
and overwhelming love for his fellows that they made friends instead of 
enemies; of indomitable will, unconquerable courage and a power of 
mental and physical endurance that yielded only to his Maker's demand, 
Theodore Roosevelt stands preeminently the most lovable, the most 
versatile, the greatest representative of a great and versatile people. 

In his death America has lost a great statesman, a soldier who could 
either command or obey, an unassuming philanthropist, an undaunted 
27 



Theodore Roosevelt 

explorer; a beloved leader and wise counsellor and withal an unadulterated 
American — a man among men. 

Resolved, That when the Senate adjourn, it do so out of profound 
respect for the memory of Theodore Roosevelt. 

Senator Davenport : At the close of the day when 
there has been laid to rest one of the greatest of the 
sons of men, without sound of music or word of eulogy, 
it is no time for ^eech. It is time to think and be still. 
America is awed into silence. The nation feels, with 
Rudyard Kipling, as if Bimyan's Greatheart had died 
in the midst of his pilgrimage. Today there has been 
laid to rest a great prophet of the whole of the American 
people. Mr. President, I second the adjournment 
resolution. 

Senator Downing: Almost within the boundaries 
of his native city, on a quiet hilltop on the shore of 
Long Island, they laid all that was mortal of Theodore 
Roosevelt to rest this afternoon, and we who come from 
his native city do not mourn so much over his death 
as we rejoice in his life, in its example, in its fruitfulness, 
and all that it has been and all that it promises to be 
for America and Americans. His soul is now with God, 
yet the influence of his mortal life will long remain with 
us to be an inspiration to real Americans until time 
itself shall be no more. I voice the sorrow at his passing 
that all Americans feel at this hour, and particularly all 
New Yorkers. He honored his State, his country, and 
humanity by his service in all capacities, national or 
personal, and in his great mind. We mourn his passing 
for what he did and for what he is now for us, and for 

28 



Theodore Roosevelt 

what he will be to those who shall come after us. I 
can think of no better words to say of him than those 
said by the poet on the occasion of his death : 

With something of the savant and the sage. 
He was, when all is said and sung, a man; 
The flower imperishable of this valiant age, 
A True American. 

Senator Sage: Mr. President, while I feel with the 
first speaker that words are not the thing on this day, I feel 
that I wish to say a very few of them, because I knew 
Theodore Roosevelt when he first came to Albany and 
because I have known him ever since. In all that time 
which, when we look back on it, was a time when men 
were becoming soft, Theodore Roosevelt was the apostle 
of manliness. At a time like today, when, after this 
great war, a great many people, not only abroad but in 
this land, are talking of internationalism, are talking 
against what I regard as the deepest passion in human 
life — loyalty to one's native land — Theodore Roosevelt 
stands like a shining light to show what loyalty and 
patriotism mean and what they mean to humanity. 
Manliness, loyalty and Americanism! There is nothing 
more to say. There is nothing more that I could say in 
praise. I am only paying a tribute. 

Senator Foley: Those of us who had the sad duty 
of attending the simple ceremonies at Oyster Bay today 
were impressed with one great fact, and that was, the 
contrast in Roosevelt's life and death. The utter sim- 
plicity of the ceremonies in that small church — the 
contrast with the pomp of emperors and kings that are 

29 



Theodore Roosevelt 

passing, and the passing of the simple American citizen, 
the bier decorated with the cavalry flag of the Rough 
Riders, the body of the former president of the United 
States was carried out in a simple, ordinary manner. 
Now I said that Mr. Roosevelt's life was one of fierce 
activity compared with the simplicity of his death, the 
manner of his death. He answered to the "one clear 
call " that Tennyson spoke about. His fierce activities 
fighting his way up as a man in public life, from mem- 
bership in the chamber on the other side of this build- 
ing to the executive chamber on the second floor, up to 
the highest office within the gift of the American peo- 
ple — all carry a lesson to the youth of America. The 
wonderful understanding he had of the American spirit, 
the wonderful doctrines he expressed of humanitarianism 
in the social side and the social needs of our people, 
his sweeping aside of the smaller things in accomplishing 
great results — as in the building of our great canal — all 
were typical of this great man. There can be no par- 
ties, no factions, in rendering our tribute to Mr. Roosevelt. 
I therefore join in seconding this resolution. 

The President: All in favor of the adoption of 
the resolution as read please arise. (Carried.) 

The Senate then adjourned out of respect to the 
memory of Mr. Roosevelt. 



30 



PROCEEDINGS IN THE ASSEMBLY 

January 8, 1919 

In the Assembly, Speaker Thaddeus C. Sweet pre- 
siding, speeches were made by Assemblyman Simon L. 
Adler of Rochester, majority leader, by Assemblyman 
Charles D. Donohue of New York city, minority leader, 
and by other members, in memory of Mr. Roosevelt. 

Mr. Adler spoke as follows: 

Mr. Speaker, there was laid to rest this afternoon, 
in the burying ground near the little village where he 
made his home, a great American. Theodore Roosevelt 
was typical of the spirit of America in its energy, in its 
desire for progress and in its effort for constant improve- 
ment. I will not attempt what has been attempted by 
much abler persons than I, and will be attempted for 
many years to come, to in any way enumerate those 
qualities which have made him great and those qualities 
which have made him practically an idol of the Amer- 
ican people. I will refer only to one achievement of his, 
or rather one type of achievement, which is particularly 
proper in these halls, and that is the effort which he 
made and the accomplishment which has come from it 
in the effort to arouse the spirit of the American people 
in the matter of political morality. I suppose that he 
has done more than any other man in this respect in 
the work of arousing the people to a sense of their politi- 
cal responsibility, to a sense of the necessity of taking a 
personal part in their government and in the choice of 

31 



Theodore Roosevelt 

those who are to govern them. If he had done no more 
than this, he would have made a place for himself in the 
history of the country and in the hearts of the people. 
I think it would not be inappropriate in this House 
where he began his political career nearly forty years ago 
to speak of his connection with this body. We are for- 
tunate in having in his own words his impressions of the 
Legislature of his day, an entirely different Legislature, 
not so much in its makeup, but in its character, from 
the Legislature we have nov/. As I have suggested, 
political ideals have not changed. Methods and ideals 
have improved since his day, and it was his work here 
which started the improvement of which I speak. I have 
found in the Century Magazine printed in April, 1885, an 
article written by Mr. Roosevelt very shortly after the 
conclusion of his three years' service in this House. This 
article is entitled, " Phases of State Legislation," and it 
goes with considerable detail into his study of conditions 
in the Legislature of his time. I will read only a few 
extracts from this article which I think will be interest- 
ing to us now: 

" Few persons realize the magnitude of the interests affected by 
State legislation in New York. It is no mere figure of speech to call 
New York the Empire State; and most of the laws directly and immediately 
affecting the interests of its citizens are passed at Albany, and not at 
Washington. In fact, there is at Albany a little Home Rule Parliament 
which presides over the destines of a commonwealth more populous 
than any one of two-thirds of the kingdoms of Europe, and one which, 
in point of wealth, material prosperity, variety of interests, extent of 
territory, and capacity for expansion, can fairly be said to rank next 
to the powers of the first class. 

This little parliament composed of one hundred and twenty-eight 
members in the Assembly and thirty-two in the Senate is, in the fullest 

32 



Theodore Roosevelt 

sense of the term, a rcpresenlalive body; there is hardly one of the many 
and widely diversified interests of the State that has not a mouthpiece 
at Albany, and hardly a single class of its citizens — not even excepting, 
I regret to say, the criminal class — which lacks its representative among 
the legislators. In the three Legislatures of which I have been a member, 
I have sat with bankers and bricklayers, with merchants and mechanics, 
witli lawyers, farmers, day laborers, saloon keepers, clergymen and prize 
fighters. Among my colleagues there were many very good men; there 
was a still more numerous class of men who were neither very good nor 
very bad, but went one way or the other, according to the strength of the 
various conflicting influences acting around, behind and upon them; 
and finally, there v.'ere many very bad men. Still, the New York Legis- 
lature, taken as a whole, is by no means as bad a body as we would be 
led to believe if our judgment was based purely on what we read in the 
great metropolitan papers; for the custom of the latter is to portray things 
as either very much better or very much worse than they are. Where 
a nimiber of men, many of them poor, some of them unscrupulous, and 
others elected by constituents too ignorant to hold them to a proper 
accountability for their actions, are put into a position of great temporary 
power, where they are called to take action upon questions affecting 
the welfare of large corporations and wealthy private individuals, the 
chances of corruption are always great, and that there is much viciousness 
and political dishonesty, much moral cowardice, and a good deal of 
actual bribe taking in Albany, no one who has had any practical experience 
of legislation can doubt; but, at the sa:ne time, I think that the good 
members always outnumber the bad, and that there is never any doubt 
as to the result when a naked question of right or wrong can be placed 
clearly and in its true light before the Legislature. The trouble is that 
on many questions the Legislature never does have the right and wrong 
clearly shown it. Either some bold clever parliamentary tactician snaps 
the measure through before the members are aware of its nature, or 
else the obnoxious features are so combined with good ones as to procure 
the support of a certain proportion of that large class of men whose 
intentions are excellent, but whose intellects are foggy." 

I will read another extract in a very much lighter 
vein. After giving a number of experiences with mem- 
bers of the Legislature, and examples of humor which 

33 



Theodore Roosevelt 

occurred and for which the members were responsible, 
he inserts this paragraph : 

" After all, outsiders furnish quite as much fun as the legislators 
themselves. The number of men who persist in writing one letters of 
praise, abuse and advice on every conceivable subject is appalling; and the 
writers are of every grade, from the lunatic and the criminal up. The 
most difficult to deal with are the men with hobbies. There is the 
Protestant fool, who thinks that our liberties are menaced by the 
machinations of the Church of Rome; and his companion idiot, who 
wants legislation against all secret societies, especially the Masons. Then 
there are the believers in " isms " of which the women suffragists stand 
in the first rank. (Now, to the horror of my relatives, I have always 
been a believer in woman's rights, but I must confess I have never seen 
such a hopelessly impracticable set of persons as the women suffragists 
who came to Albany to get legislation.) They simply would not draw 
up their measures in proper form; when I pointed out to one of them 
that their proposed bill was dra.vn up in direct defiance of certain of the 
sections of the Constitution of the State, he blandly replied that he did 
not care at all for that, because the measure had been drawn up so as to 
be in accord with the Constitution of Heaven. There was no answer 
to this beyond the very obvious one that Albany was in no way akin 
to Heaven." 

He concludes his article with this paragraph: 

" In concluding I would say that while there is so much evil at 
Albany, and so much reason for our exerting ourselves to bring about 
a better state of things, yet there is no cause for being disheartened or 
for thinking that it is hopeless to expect improvement. On the contrary', 
the standard of legislative morals is certainly higher than it was fifteen years 
ago or twenty-five years ago, and, judging by appearances, it seems likely 
that it will continue slowly and by fits and starts to improve in the future; 
keeping pace exactly with the gradual awakening of the popular mind 
to the necessity of having honest and intelligent representatives in the 
State Legislature." 

Mr. Adler offered for the consideration of the 
house a resolution, in the words following: 

34 



Theodore Roosevelt 

Welding into one dynamic personality the rare qualities of aristocracy 
of birth, education and training with an all-per\'ading democracy of both 
thought and action, uniting the ripe judgment of the scholar and phi- 
losopher with the keen foresight of the visionary; firm and unyielding to 
the point of hardness yet cloaking refusal and rebuke with such evident 
and overwhelming love for his fellows that they made friends instead of 
enemies; of indomitable will, unconquerable courage and a power of mental 
and physical endurance that jaelded only to his Maker's demand, 
Theodore Roosevelt stands preeminently the most lovable, the most 
versatile, the greatest representative of a great and versatile people. 

In his death America has lost a great statesman, a soldier who could 
either command or obey, an imassuming philanthropist, an undaunted 
explorer, a beloved leader and wise counsellor and withal an unadultered 
American — • a man among men. 

Resolved, That this House do now adjourn in respect to the memory 
of Theodore Roosevelt. 

Mr. C. D. Donohue: Appreciating that whatever 
is said this evening will add neither lustre nor glory 
nor honor to that great American who has found his 
final resting-place today, nevertheless, I feel that it is 
eminently proper this body should take action upon the 
demise of one who had not only the respect, the confi- 
dence, the esteem of all, but was loved by every one 
who called himself an American. Theodore Roosevelt 
was a statesman and a publicist. For over seven years 
he served as chief executive of the United States, as 
\-ice-president of the United States and likewise in the 
exalted office of governor of the State of New York. 
He typified in himself the ideal American. He served 
in this body and his career while a member of this Legis- 
lature presaged his usefulness in the future. His vigor 
and his manhood were exemplified on many occasions in 
his subsequent career, but above and beyond all, the 

35 



Theodore Roosevelt 

one thing to my mind that I feel has ingratiated him 
in the hearts of all Americans was his true ideal of 
Americanism, his insistence that the rights of Americans 
must be maintained at all times. For this, if nothing 
else, America owes him an immense debt of gratitude. 
The opposition his strong convictions and earnestness 
created were captured by his courage and disarmed by 
his honesty. He was a man of gi'eat force, a man of 
religion. Not only was he loved by every true Amer- 
ican, but there was a warm spot for him in the hearts 
of the peoples of all the world. No man in modern 
public life was connected with so many and different 
important events. There was no office he ever occupied 
which he did not adorn. His career is closed, but it is 
closed with the respect and the admiration of every 
American. His loss is a personal loss which I know 
every one in this chamber feels and which will be felt 
by all of our citizens. 

Mr. Kennedy: I do not think it would be fair for 
me to miss this opportunity to say that organized labor 
throughout this nation has lost a great friend. Back in 
the early nineties, v/hen the coal barons of this country 
tried to have their way, the great man that we speak 
of tonight was perhaps the first president of the United 
States to raise his hand in defense of organized labor, 
and I should not want to miss this opportunity to let 
this body know, to let the people of our nation know, 
that organized labor has lost a true friend. 

Mr. Louis M. Martin: I hesitate about saying a 
word in seconding the resolution offered by the leader 



Theodore Roosevelt 

of the majority, but I feel, perhaps, that I should do so. 
Nineteen years seems to be quite a span in human life. 
Still, looking back, nineteen years seems but a short 
time. Tliree of us are here in this body tonight who 
nineteen years ago were members. In those days, as 
Mr. Adler has said, political conditions were somewhat 
changed and somewhat different than at the present 
time. Political organizations, sir, were much stronger 
in their power and influence. Circumstances so changed 
conditions in one of the party organizations that a young 
man forty-two years of age, without any political experi- 
ence except three years m this House, purely on his 
military' record, was nominated, elected and inaugurated 
governor of this State. He faced two powerful organiza- 
tions of political affiliations. Those men here tonight 
who were members then, Mr. Miller of Erie and Mr. 
Witter of Tioga, can recall the various remarks that 
went about this chamber and the Senate — what was 
the boy governor going to do? Some suggested that it 
would prove a disastrous failure, the administration con- 
ducted by a military colonel of forty-two years of experi- 
ence. We assembled here, as we assembled tonight, and 
listened to his first message. It convinced us, Mr. Speaker, 
as his actions during that year and the nexi; convinced 
us, that we had at the helm of this State in the executive 
chamber a man whose grasp of the public affairs of this 
State, whose ideas of proper government, whose bent 
and trend was forever towards what was right, and who 
was so great that instead of dismembering the party 
organization, sir, he built up party organization and left 
it stronger and better because he occupied the place 

37 



Theodore Roosevelt 

that he did. Such a man in our State government 
should never be forgotten, and we men who look back 
on those years that it was our privilege to be associated 
with him here look back upon them as the brightest two 
years in our lives. If any one thing can be cited as an 
earmark of this man's life, it was the bill that was put 
before this House imder his direction and special message 
by which $600,000,000 of property in this State that had 
never before paid a dollar's worth of taxes was attached 
to the assessment-rolls of this State and continues imtil 
the present time to bear its just burden of the expense 
of government. Those of us here tonight who were here 
at that time know what he did for the State during the 
strenuous days that were used in passing this most 
beneficial measure. It was one of the things that after- 
wards made him vice-president and then the president 
of this great country. After he retired there were those 
of us who differed from this man, but the incident, thanlc 
Heaven, has been closed long ago before we come here 
to do honor to his memory. A great man has left us 
and the nations and the rulers of the world send their 
condolences to his bereaved family, but we in this State, 
sir, have sustained a personal loss. Long after the three 
of us Vv^ho are trying to say a word in his memory have 
been forgotten, the great imprint that his magnificent 
character has left upon this State will continue to act 
as a guide for good government for future men to follow. 

The Speaker : We have met under the shadow of 
a great national sorrow. Words seem too weak to express 
that which we all feel. As it has been said, Theodore 



Theodore Roosevelt 

Roosevelt began his political career in this chamber. He 
closed it as the first citizen of the world, known and 
respected in every nation on earth. As a citizen, hus- 
band and father, legislator, soldier, governor, president 
of the United States, and as a man, he met every obliga- 
tion with a stout heart and fearless energy. The world 
loses a wonderful character, but history gains a subject 
which will live as long as men record and read the deeds 
of our great men. His life was an inspiration to every 
man who has faith in his country. By word and deed 
he proved his loyalty. WTien the clouds of the World 
War were gathering, he constantly urged the necessity 
of preparedness, and he stood ready at all times to fight 
for the country he loved, with his hands and his brain. 
The sacrifices which he has been called upon to suffer 
and which tested his heart and strength called for hero- 
ism, but he never flinched in his devotion to his highest 
ideals. American history will be richer because of his 
services to his country. He loved nature, he loved his 
home and made it to himself the happiest place on earth. 
He always had faith in his fellowmen and led them 
aright. He could differ with his people and still remain 
their friend. In any test that can be applied he was 
100 per cent American. There never was a greater need 
of deeper national thinking than today. We shall miss 
him and his counsels at every turn we make. In his 
last public statement read last Sunday night in New- 
York he said: 

"There must be no sagging back in the fight for Americanism. If an 
immigrant comes here he shall be treated on an equality with everyone 
else regardless of his creed or birthplace or origin. This is predicated 
39 



Theodore Roosevelt 

upon a man being in very fact an American and nothing but an American. 
There cannot be divided allegiance at all. We have room in this countrj' 
for but one flag ^ the American flag; we have room for but one language 
— the English language; we have room for but one soul loyalty and that 
is loyalty to the American people." 

Today we have laid him away to sleep with the 
immortals of the ages with the flag of his country under 
which he served flying the signal of sorrow all around the 
world. His life and his work shall inspire us now with 
deeper faith in our institutions and a deeper determina- 
tion to live and work for the best country in the world. 
Theodore Roosevelt will always live in the history of 
the nation he loved and served and as the years go by 
his memory will grow dearer to all true Americans. His 
last words were, " Please turn out the light." Shall we 
then say that his Heavenly Father heard these words 
and turned out the light of his life forever to face the 
wonders of eternity? 

Mr. Speaker put the question whether the House 
would agree to said resolution and it was determined in 
the affirmative by a unanimous rising vote, and the 
House adjourned until Thursday, January 9th, at 11 
o'clock A. M. 



40 



ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL DAY 



PROCLAMATION 



STATE OF NEW YORK 

ExECUTU^ Chamber 

Albany. /«)n((7Vv 13. 1919 

WHEREAS, There is a sentiment throughout the country that 
appropriate memorial exercises in honor of the late Colonel 
Theodore R(X)sevelt be held in the near future; and 
WHEREAS. The Congress of the United States has appointed 
February ninth as a day for memorial services on the part of the National 
Government, and a movement has been inaugurated in many States 
to hold memorial exercises on the same date to honor the memory of one 
of our great American statesmen; 

NOW. THEREFORE. I, Alfred E. Smith. Governor of the State of 
New York, do hereby proclaim Sunday. February ninth, as Roosevelt 
Memorial Day in the State of New York, in order that our people may do 
honor to one who was Governor of this State and President of the United 
States; and I request that such memorial exercises be held by the Legis- 
lature ot the State of New York, and by the people and organizations 
throughout the State generally. 

Given under my hand and the Privy 
Seal of the State at the Capitol in 
the City of Albany this thirteenth 
[L.S.I day of January in the year of om- 

Lord one thousand nine hundred 
and nineteen. 



(Signed ) 



^/j'^M^u^^^' 



By the Governor: 

George R. Van Namee, 
Secrelary to the Governor 



43 



CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 

In Assembly 

January 29, 1919 

The following resolution was offered by Franklin 
A. Coles, Member of Assembly from the Second District 

of Nassau County. 

Whereas, In the death of Theodore Roosevelt the State and nation 
have lost an ideal American; and 

Whereas, He began his pohtical life as a member of the Assembly 
of the State of New York and it is fitting that some aclvnowledgment 
of his services to his country and State be made by the Legislature. 

Resolved (if the Senate concur). That on February ninth, nineteen 
h'ondred and nineteen, a memorial service be held in commemoration 
of his death. 

Resolved. That a committee consisting of three Senators, appointed 
by the temporary president of the Senate, and three members of the 
Assembly, appointed by the Speal;er of the Assembly, be ordered to 
arrange for such memorial service. 

Adopted. 

Pursuant to above resolution the following committee 
was appointed to arrange for the memorial service: 

For Senate: George F. Thompson, George T. Burling 
and Bernard Downing. 

For Assembly: Franklin A. Coles, Louis M. Martin 
and Peter A. McArdle. 



45 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 



IN HONOR OF 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

Capitol, Assembly Chamber, Albany, New York 

Sunday, February Ninth 

Nineteen Hundred Nineteen 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 

Assembly Chamber 

Albany, February 9. 1919 

Honorable Louis M. Martin, presiding: 

The assemblage will please come to order. Invoca- 
tion by the Rev. C. H. French of Albany. 

Invocation by Rev. C. H. French, 

Pastor Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, Albany 

Let us all look to God for His blessing. 

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we ask Thee 
to grant us Thy blessing as we have met together in 
this memorial service. We rejoice that we may always 
count upon Thy favor and upon Thy blessed presence 
when we would be met together to consider matters 
concerning the great affairs of time and eternity. 

We pray that tonight Thou wilt abimdantly bless 
us as our minds go out over the past, over the way in 
which Thou hast raised up men to lead the affairs of 
this great nation and people. 

We thank Thee, our Heavenly Father, that amid 
all the uncertainties of life that we may count upon 
Thee, upon the everlasting arms that are beneath us 
and upon the infinite hand that is guiding and shaping 
the affairs of humanity. 

We thank Thee, O God, that Thou hast revealed 
Thyself unto us as the God of righteousness and tiaith 
and life; that through the world and through Thy word 

19 



Theodore Roosevelt 

and through Thy Divine Son, Thou hast made Thy- 
self known unto us as our Father. 

Tonight, we do thank Thee, O God, for the way 
in which our Hves have been guided; we thank Thee for 
the rich heritage that is ours; we thank Thee for the 
splendid company of men who in days past have been 
inspired by Thee to lead Thy people. 

Especially, we would pray for him whom we are 
met tonight to honor. We thank Thee, O God, for his 
rich heritage, for his natural endowments. We thank 
Thee for the earnest and the fruitful use that he made 
of the talents that were committed to his care. We 
thank Thee for his passionate devotion to the welfare 
of this nation. We thank Thee, O God, for his manli- 
ness, for his hatred of all shams and hypocrisies. We 
thank Thee for the splendid ideals that he has set before 
the manhood of this nation. 

Wilt Thou so guide us in this service; wilt Thou 
so use Thy servants who shall interpret unto us the 
life of Theodore Roosevelt, that we may with one accord 
more perfectly dedicate ourselves to whole-hearted ser- 
vice of the nation and of all humanity. 

We beseech Thee, O God, that Thou wilt look with 
loving favor upon the president of the United States, 
upon the governor of this State, and upon all those who 
are in positions of influence and authority and power in 
our land and in all the lands of the earth. Wilt Thou 
in Thy wisdom and in Thy love so move upon their 
hearts and minds that they may act and speak and will 
so that light and order, truth and justice, may be main- 
tained in all the world. 

50 



Theodore Roosevelt 

So teach us, O God, to number our days that we 
may apply our hearts unto wisdom, and in Thine own 
time, O God, bring us home unto Thyself to receive the 
reward of those who have labored faithfully in Tliine 
earthly vineyard. 

Through Christ Jesus, our Lord, Amen. 

The Chairman, Honorable Louis M. Martin: 
This magnificent outpouring of the citizens of the State 
but illustrates the affection and the esteem the people 
of this country had for America's first citizen. 

Those of us whose privilege it was to serve in this 
House when he was the governor of the State look back 
upon those days as cherished days. 

On behalf of the committee in charge, expression of 
thanks is made for this outpouring of citizenship. 

The chair will deviate from the usual expressions of 
praise or of a laudatory nature in the introduction of the 
distinguished gentlemen who have so kindly consented 
to come here tonight and address us. So closely identi- 
fied have they been with the civic and educational his- 
tory of this State that laudatory words of introduction 
from the chair will be entirely inappropriate. 

First, will be a selection by the quartet. 

Selection — "Lead, Kindly Light," by the quartet. 

lead, kindly LIGHT! 
Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom. 

Lead Thou me on! 
The night is dark, and I am far from home; 

Lead Thou me on! 
Keep Thou my feet, I do not ask to see 
The distant scene; one step enough for me. 
51 



Theodore Roosevelt 

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou 

Shouldst lead me on; 
I loved to choose and see my path; but now 

Lead Thou me on! 
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears. 
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years! 

So long Thy power has blest me, sure it still 

Will lead me on 
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 

The night is gone. 
And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile! 

The Chairman: Address by the Honorable Joseph 
A. Lawson of the city of Albany. 

Address by Honorable Joseph A. Lawson 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: In look- 
ing over this wonderful concourse of men and women 
of the State of New York, one must be deeply sensible 
of the honor conferred upon him by the committee of 
the two Houses of this great Legislature in being selected 
to pay a sUght tribute at this time to the memory of 
Theodore Roosevelt. I am not here to serve funeral- 
baked meats, and I do not think that he would have it so. 

As I am conscious of the fact that this is a gather- 
ing to perpetuate and keep green his memory, I feel that 
the personality of the man, and his life and work, should 
lead one to view his going " over the top " with cheer- 
fulness, even as he lived ; to view his taking-away with 
hope and not with despair; to gaze upon the empty 
chair with the moist eye of affection and warm-hearted 
recollection. 

52 



Theodore Roosevelt 

I want to dissipate, perhaps, an erroneous impres- 
sion that has been circulated with regard to my personal 
intimacy with Theodore Roosevelt. It was not great; 
it was limited, but I came in contact with him at an 
early period of his career. 

In 1882, the men of Columbia university who were 
being inducted into the mysteries of the legal profession 
received their education in the old, now obsolete, build- 
ing on Great Jones street, at the comer of Lafayette 
place. The class was large, over four hundred in num- 
ber, divided into sections, one portion receiving instruc- 
tion in the morning, another in the afternoon. If you 
didn't happen to belong to the morning section, you 
never saw the men in that division of the class and 
\ace versa with regard to the afternoon section. But 
among my classmates was Theodore Roosevelt, and I 
mind his passing to and from the lecture room, and the 
casual acquaintance. But there are circumstances asso- 
ciated with my pleasant acquaintance with him that 
stand out with marked clearness in my recollection 
because it afforded me both amusement and chagrin, 
and illustrated a characteristic of Mr. Roosevelt that I 
think all of those who knew him well appreciated. 

During the course of the studies we were both pur- 
suing, he found that broader field in which he labored 
so assiduously. He came to the conclusion that the dry, 
uninteresting details of the legal profession, the intricacies 
of the rule in Shelly's case, the study of the feudal 
tenures of England as exemplified in the great work of 
Blackstone, were not the things upon which that avid 
mind of his must feed, and so he entered the arena of 

53 



Theodore Roosevelt 

politics and was elected to the Legislature of the State 
of New York without graduating and taking his degree. 
But it so happened that after he had arrived in 
these halls of legislation, had made his mark emd became 
distinguished as one of the younger members of the 
lower body, down in old Columbia it was decided that 
we wanted some special legislation for our institution. 
In those days, the law^^ers were divided into two classes — 
attorneys and counsellors. You were first admitted to 
this wonderful profession as an attorney, and then when 
you had learned to fill out a summons, serve a subpoena, 
and empty the waste-basket, you might in due time be 
advanced to the more dignified degree of counsellor. 
Being ambitious, it seemed to us a fictitious distinction; 
we wanted to go to work immediately and appear in 
the highest court of the State, and so we decided to 
have the distinction abolished, and to that end my con- 
stituents in the law school for two reasons, I think — 
one because of my being perhaps a little imafraid, and 
second, having a home in tlie city of Albany, which 
would save considerable expense — placed me upon the 
committee to look after that legislation, and with me 
a man from the far west, and very aptly named " West- 
em Starr." And so we came to the Legislature and of 
course our fellow classmate was the first man we inter- 
viewed — Theodore Roosevelt. I can see it as though 
it were yesterday. We sent in our cards, let him know 
what we wanted and the wish was simply the fore- 
runner of his energy, of his push, of his going ahead 
with the proposition that we sought and that we were 
here to accomplish. 

54 



Theodore Roosevelt 

Time passed and I saw little of Theodore Roosevelt 
until he became governor of the State of New York. 
I went over to tlie gubernatorial mansion, which, I think, 
he would rather have preferred to be called his home, and 
as I stepped up to him I said, " Governor, do you recol- 
lect that little incident when you were in Columbia law 
school and I came with one Western Starr to enlist 
your aid for the benefit of our old institution? " He 
looked at me, exposing those expressive dentals, and said, 
" I most assuredly do." " Why," he said, " it is a little 
bit of a world, anyway; when I was out on my ranch, 
I was appointed a deputy sheriff and I arrested a horse 
thief and took him before a tenntorial judge and who 
should that territorial judge be but our old friend, West- 
em Starr." " Now," he continued, " if you had only 
been there instead of the horse thief, our trio would 
have been complete." (Laughter.) 

Theodore Roosevelt was bom under circumstances 
that would naturally be very much adverse to advance- 
ment along the lines tliat he followed in after life. Theo- 
dore Roosevelt's family was an old Dutch Hugenot 
family in the city of New York, occupying a social posi- 
tion second to none, and having wealth enough to place 
Mr. Roosevelt in the very first circles of the metropol- 
itan aristocracy. But he lived it down. (Laughter.) 
The environment of the home was one of culture and 
refinement. His father had an instinct that the son 
inherited, because among the anecdotes published of the 
elder Roosevelt none reaches further out to the human 
understanding and the human heart than that he devoted 
much of his time and his means to a philanthropic 

55 



Theodore Roosevelt 

project that had for its object the rescuing of the waifs 
from the streets of that great metropolis. Ah, there 
must have been some of that milk of human kindness 
that flowed through the veins of the boy Theodore. 
Physically weak; describing himself as rickety and asth- 
matic; he received his early training through the medium 
of a tutor, not by the rough and tumble of the public 
school but in the confines of a loving, luxurious, refined 
home. He went to Harvard college. There realizing 
his impotence physically, he bent those energies that 
placed him in the White House to building up a consti- 
tution that would have been a handicap to any other 
young man. Oh! I often think how easy it would have 
been, how easy along the lines of least resistance, for 
young Roosevelt to have dropped gracefully back into 
the social environment that was his; been quite content 
to spend his afternoons amidst the soporific surroundings 
of the five o'clock tea and find his excitement in the 
tango that would have given him just enough exercise 
and not overtaxed his physical capacity; how he could 
just as well have chased the aniseed bag over the fields 
of Long Island rather than to have ridden the broncho 
on the plains of the west. It would have been so easy; 
but there was sometliing in the mental makeup of the 
boy and the man that kept him from being a dilettante, 
that made him the hero of the boys of America, that 
made him the man whose memory we honor tonight. 
In college, not renowned for his successes, reading what 
he loved to read, an omnivorous admirer of American 
history, a great reader of that which led him into the 
paths where the wild animals had their habitats, a natu- 

56 



Theodore Roosevelt 

ralist, a botanist, a student of nature, but not distin- 
guishing himself in the classics or in the realms of litera- 
ture outside of those lines that he cared to pursue. But 
he was making the most of himself; he was feasting 
himself; I can imagine him imder the elms of Cambridge, 
drinking in the spirit of Americanism; I can imagine him 
in Boston, the hub of the universe, filling himself with 
the legends of his country; I can imagine him reading 
the lives of the great Americans who had preceded him 
in those holy places and resolving in his heart of hearts 
that he, too, would make of himself something of which 
his country might be proud. 

He came out of Harvard university and made his 
choice of the two great political parties. I have no 
fault to find with him for that. It was just at that 
time that he attracted my attention, and up to this 
ninth day of February, 1919, I have followed him step 
by step in his career through the medium of the public 
prints, the biographer, and the word of mouth of the 
loving friend. I had some aspirations along political 
lines myself, perhaps not as high-minded as Theodore 
Roosevelt's, perhaps not as ambitious as his, and I chose 
the other path. He took the "high road" and I took 
the " low road," and I am traveling it yet. (Laughter.) 
But our lives ran parallel because of our association in 
the law school, our personal acquaintance in those yeai's 
of young manhood when the mind is shaping itself and 
the ideals are bright and untarnished by contact with 
the world, and while I felt that he was wrong politically, 
that he had committed an error of judgment, I couldn't 
help admiring the manner in which he got away with 

57 



Theodore Roosevelt 

it. (Laughter.) And so year by year I followed his 
career, and ah, many is the time I have contrasted my 
puny efforts with his magnificent successes; many is the 
time I have said to myself: " If I could only make the 
man of myself that my classmate and friend, Theodore 
Roosevelt, has made of himself; if I could leave my mark; 
if I could press my feet into the sands of time that there 
might be left an impression that nothing should oblit- 
erate; that I might have the strength and the force of 
character and conscience of Theodore Roosevelt." And 
so all these years have I watched liis successes. 

When he came into this hall of legislation he came 
at a time when New York State politics — and I speak 
it with all due reverence to both Houses of this Legis- 
lature, and to this magnificent structure, sacred to the 
making of law and its enforcement — when New York 
State politics had reached a point where reform was 
necessary in both parties. There didn't seem to be a 
place for a man with the ideals of Theodore Roosevelt, 
and he realized it himself. And there was one thing 
about his politics that appealed to me; it was the sin- 
cerity of it; it wasn't self-seeking; it wasn't that kind of 
politics that makes a man untrue to himself, and Theo- 
dore Roosevelt fought what he believed to be the worst 
elements in both the great political parties, and the 
people began to see that he had the courage of his con- 
victions and they accorded him the respect that was 
his due, and finally the great party to which he belonged 
mentioned him for the honorable position of Speaker of 
this House. And so he went from one success to another. 
I am to be followed by a most eloquent speaker, far 

58 



Theodore Roosevelt 

more competent to deal with the life and times of Theo- 
dore Roosevelt than I am, and I shall not trespass long; 
I shall not endeavor to give you anything like a recapit- 
ulation of the life of Theodore Roosevelt, simply sum- 
marize it. 

He was a member of the police commission in the 
city of New York — president of it. Finding New York 
city in a condition as a municipality where the enforce- 
ment of law along certain hnes had become more honored 
in the breach than in the observance, without any regard 
for what effect it might have upon his political future, 
Theodore Roosevelt obeyed the dictates of his conscience 
and applied himself to the morale of the police force of 
that great city. His history as a m.ember of that board 
is well known to everyone who has read, but it must 
have given him a marvelous knowledge of human nature. 
I cannot conceive of a position that would have brought 
a man of his mental calibre and physical attributes into 
closer contact with the very elements that he needed to 
mold him than the police force of the city of New York 
in the years of which he was a member of the board. 

United States Civil Service Commissioner. Civil 
service that once was denominated by a great states- 
man as "snivel service" but Theodore Roosevelt never 
viewed it that way ; it was civil service to him. It meant 
that the men for tlie positions should be the m.en fitted 
for them and not the men with the pull. And so as a 
m.ember of the United States Civil Ser\'ice Commission 
he covered himself with glory because he continued to 
obey the dictates of his conscience and live up to his 
ideals. 

59 



Theodore Rooseveit 

I think as I look back upon it now, as we approach 
the twelfth day of February, and I recall those lines 
that Abraham Lincoln loved so well — 

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud; 
Like a swift-glancing meteor, a fast-flying cloud, 
A Hash of the lightning, a break of the wave; 
He passes from life to his rest in the grave. 

they seem to me to typify the career of this great man — 
" a swift-glancing meteor," " a fast-flying cloud," " a 
flash of the lightning," symbols of his career. Not the 
cloistered hearth, not the withdrawal from touch with 
humanity to the quiet and seclusion of the study, but 
the hurly-burly, the fight, everlasting fight and grapple 
with the things of evil to the betterment of that great 
country he loved so well. 

Governor of the State of New York — this great 
Empire State with all the complexities of government 
that surround one in that exalted station — wealth, labor, 
anarchy, social preferments; all sorts and kinds of influ- 
ences being brought to bear to sway the mind of the 
chief executive, and he held himself steady and not one 
blot upon the escutcheon. 

Assistant secretary of the United States Navy. Why, 
they say of him when he assum.ed that post that he went 
to Congress and said: " I want eight million dollars for 
powder." They knew his enthusiasm and said: " What 
do you want with eight million dollars for powder? " 
" I want to teach the boys to shoot." And they gave 
him the eight million dollars, and he came back and 
said: " I want five million more." Perhaps my figures 
are wrong, but the newspaper boys will correct me. 

60 



Theodore Roosevelt 

However, it was a very large sum and he came back for 
the second sum, and they said: " Why, have you shot 
that powder all away? " " Yes, it is shot away and to 
good purpose." "All right," and he got the second 
appropriation. Well, what has been the result in the 
years just passed? WTien our navy sailed the blue waters 
and lined herself up with Great Britain's magnificent 
representation on the high seas, our boys shot true, our 
boys shot home, our boys were prepared to annihilate 
their enemies because back in Theodore Roosevelt's 
time he burned up the powder to teach them how to 
do it. 

President of these United States. Ah, the greatest 
gift in the choice of any people. President of these 
United States — a career that sometimes starts on the 
towpath, not often in the drawing-room. The first presi- 
dent of these United States to realize the iniquitous use 
that was being made of wealth by corporations that 
were unmoral, by corporations that were dealing unlaw- 
fully, by corporations that were banded together for pur- 
poses that worked evil to the mass of the people, and the 
man who had been out on the plains and busted the 
broncho became the " trust-buster " of the United States. 
And then and there his heart went out to mankind, 
those yearnings toward the plain people he loved so well, 
and all sorts and kinds of labor legislation were dear 
to him. Federal bills for amelioration of the working 
men were his constant care, and he didn't do it in the 
spirit of demagogy; he didn't do it to make votes; he 
didn't do it to advance himself; he did it because he was 
true to himself and wanted to "do things." 

61 



Theodore Roosevelt 

But as I look back over his career, and I sketch 
it ill such broad lines tonight, there is one other element 
in his presidential experience that appeals to me with 
peculiar force because Theodore Roosevelt was the 
father of legislation in the interests of the little ones, 
what is called " child labor legislation." I sat in the 
anteroom tonight before I came into this rostrum and 
I heard the chairman of the committee tell an ancedote 
of Theodore Roosevelt, how he was going to luncheon 
with a very distinguished statesman and walking down 
Broadway he saw a little urchin crying his heart out, 
and he said to his friend: " Wait a moment." And he 
gathered the little one up and asked: "What is the 
matter? " And he found the little one was lost. The 
president of the United States gathered the little one in 
his arms and took him to the neare-st police station and 
found the frenzied father and mother and restored the 
little one. Just typical, just an illustration of the great 
heart and the utter simplicity of the man and it was that 
instinct that made him see the rotten injustice of the 
little fellow with the great white plague working in his 
system down underground in the coal mines from early 
mom vuitil late at night, following the mule up and 
down the tramway; and the other little one of the factory 
behind the loom of the south or north, I care not which 
side of Mason-Dixon's line it was, with his little lungs 
filled with lint, with his little eyes glazed with watching 
the warp and woof of the cloth before him, never seeing 
God's blue sky, or listening to the birds singing, or 
running about with his playmates and playing duck-on- 
the-rock, leap frog, and all those concomitants of the 

62 



Theodore Roosevelt 

natural American boy. He saw the needs of those little 
ones, and I hope his mantle will fall on someone in 
authority in these days of 1919. 

You cannot make heroes; you cannot make boys in 
khaki; you cannot make strong men and women out of 
the puny, ill-nourished, undeveloped children of America. 
Those efforts will always stand out in the history of 
Theodore Roosevelt as significant of his character. 

I mustn't use up all the material; I cannot; I might 
draw on your patience imtil much later than this and 
I would have given you but the most sketchy idea of the 
life and work of Theodore Roosevelt. 

I come now to what seems to me to be the tragedy 
of his life. On the eleventh day of November last we all 
joined in the shouts of joy and the ringing of bells and the 
tooting of whistles and the demonstration which said 
the armistice was signed, the war over, and the great 
conflict of 1914-18 at an end. Yes, it was at an end. 
And that recalls another incident in the career of Theodore 
Roosevelt. 

When Theodore Roosevelt came back from his 
African explorations he had a triumphal progress through 
Europe, and among the incidents that marked that 
progress was the fact that the Imperial German Emperor 
invited him to join him on his staff and they sat, side 
by side, on their mettlesome steeds at a review of the 
Prussian guards. But Emperor WiDielm will never see 
Theodore Roosevelt again. (Laughter.) 

The armistice was signed; the war was over, but 
Theodore Roosevelt was not president of the United 
States. In my mind's eye I can see that loving father, 

63 



Theodore Roosevelt 

that great-hearted citizen, that ambitious man, in his 
study at Sagamore Hill. I can see the expression of his 
face as he listens to the wild clamor that said the war 
was over and the boys were coming home, and he not 
president of these great United States he loved so well. 
During the conflict, and as victory became apparent, 
Theodore Roosevelt, out of the bitterness that may have 
come to him in those silent hours of contemplation, gave 
expression to words that I myself in public have criticized, 
and now that he has gone to his rest I am sorry for. 
I say that even as Moses after leading the children of 
Israel out of the house of bondage came in sight of the 
Promised Land and from the heights of Nebo's lonely 
mountain looked over into the fields and pastures where 
he never could wander, so the great heart of Theodore 
Roosevelt must have felt when he saw this beloved 
country victor in the World War, and he not at the head 
of its affairs. And I believe the recording angel will 
drop a tear upon the book and blot out forever any 
unworthy expression that Theodore Roosevelt ever may 
have uttered under the stress of the times that followed 
the lowering of the German standard. 

Aye, and the end came. The end came as I think 
he would like to have had it come. We speak of him 
as " Our President," but the masses speak of him as 
" Teddy;" we speak of him as the man who has received 
the adulation of his own fellow countrymen and that 
of the peoples of Europe, but we remember him as the 
broncho-buster, as the man who rode across the plains 
in search of big game. We give him all the glory and 
honor that is due him for the exalted stations he has 

64 



Theodore Roosevelt 

occupied, but that which knits him to us with hooks of 
steel is his humanity. When the end came it was not 
with bulletins signed by eminent surgeons giving pulse, 
temperature and respiration, it was in the still watches 
of the night that he laid down his armor and the 
armistice was complete. 

I can see in my mind's eye a great concourse 
of people, and they are wending their way toward 
Sagamore Hill and the modest cemetery at Oyster Bay. 
They come to pay their tribute to Theodore Roosevelt, 
dead. And in the midst of his plot there rises the white 
pole that marks every little red school-house the country 
over, and at the peak of the pole there flies the thirteen 
bars and the forty-eight stars he loved so well, and in 
a tree top at one side of this plot a big, full-tliroated, 
red-breasted robin sings its song while this great con- 
course of American people, of plain people, wend their 
way. As they pass the spot, they see it marked by 
a rugged granite block, — " how firm a foundation,"^ 
and one side of it is polished that it may bear an 
inscription, and chiselled there in the plainest form of 
script that he who runs may read, are the simple words: 
" Teddy, the American." (Applause.) 

Selection—" Beautiful Isle of Somewhere," by the 
quartet. 

BEAUTIFUL ISLE OF SOMEWHERE 

Somewhere the sun is shining. 
Somewhere the song-birds dwell ; 
Hush, then, thy sad repining; 
God lives and all is well. 

65 



Theodore Roosevelt 

Somewhere, somewhere, 

Beautiful Isle of Somewhere! 

Land of the true, where we live anew — 

Beautiful Isle of Somewhere! 

Somewhere the day is longer. 
Somewhere the task is done; 
Somewhere the heart is stronger. 
Somewhere the guerdon won. 

Somewhere the load is lifted. 
Close by an open gate; 
Somewhere the clouds are rifted, 
Somewhere the angels wait. 

The Chairman : Chancellor Day of the University 
of Syracuse. 

Address by Chancellor James Roscoe Day 

If ten years ago any one had told me that on this 
9th day of February I would be found in our State Capitol 
by your request delivering an eulogy of Theodore Roose- 
velt, I would not have been impressed with his gift of 
prophecy! 

But that is Theodore Roosevelt. He was an 
impossible man doing impossible things as no other men 
could do them. You differed with him deeply and 
radically. And you did not change your convictions, 
but you found that you had not been in conflict with 
him but with something incidental to him. Some men's 
opinions are all there is of them. One opinion and you 
have the whole man. With Roosevelt a conviction or 
a doctrine was an incident. While you were fighting that 
doctrine he was away into volumes of others leaving you 

66 



Theodore Roosevelt 

to go on with your contentions. He was infinitely more 
than an article of his economic or political creed. You 
could not contend with such a man. Your controversy 
was not with Iiini. 

How to appreciate such a man in just proportions 
is an almost impossible task. 

No man lived a life more exposed to the public eye. 
He never whispered. But men were always blundering 
about his motives and the wisdom of his bold, uncom- 
promising utterances. Where to stand to measure him 
is the question. There is a position among the Himalayas 
where vast mountains arise before you. One of them 
is so far distant that you see only its summit. It is the 
highest of the mighty range. But you can see only its 
crown against the sky. You cannot see where it con- 
nects with the earth or what its bases are. Another 
is so near that it overwhelms you and you lose all power 
of measurement. The first is the highest mountain in 
all Asia if not in the world. The second is but little 
less but it fills tlie valley out of which it springs with 
a suddenness that confuses thought and is appalling. 

Washington is that mountain now distant with its 
base in tradition. Roosevelt is the mountain that fills 
the valley before you and is radiant with refracted and 
changing light. What he is will be the subject of varying 
opinions and discussions as men see the earth connections 
all visible and the far suinmit towering above them in the 
clouds, refracting colors differing to each angle of vision. 

There is too much of Roosevelt and there are too 
many vividly related phases of his unusual personality 
for one to discuss philosophically his great character, 



Theodore Roosevelt 

much less his work as a legislator, a soldier and the 
chief executive of his great State and the nation. 

No one fully competent has presented Theodore 
Roosevelt to the world in outline. Certain traits were 
so bold and outstanding that all could discover them as 
he hurried past in the rush of his impetuous course. 
But it will be years before this marvelous man will stand 
out in the symmetry and harmony of all the traits of his 
character and activity that have seemed to many of us 
sometimes conflicting and inconsistent. 

To measure force requires most delicate instruments 
and great skill. To know men in themselves and in the 
influence of their education, companionship and sur- 
roundings is a task that often has to be handed over 
to generations. 

Mr. Roosevelt was a man with whom no one could 
agree in all things and with whom many disagreed in 
everything. He outstrode thinking men. The conser- 
vative men could not keep pace with him. He violated 
traditions one minute and the next was the reverent 
defender of the men who created them. He betrayed his 
party one hour and the next was at its head, the idolized 
leader and defender. 

Sometimes he attacked constituted forms with 
violence, but he restrained his wrath when demagogues 
threatened disaster. He made no use of anything in his 
reformatory efforts for merely personal political purposes 
and sometimes went too far in defiance of temporizing 
politics. 

Study Mr. Roosevelt over a space of sufficient 
breadth and length and the conflicts of his personality 

68 



Theodore Roosevelt 

harmonize. There were certain traits that were high 
peaks in the range of his character. They must be 
studied above the common level. 

He had great force. And men like force. The 
timid man shrinlcs from it when it has no visible orbit 
or is not running on steel rails bolted down to a secure 
roadway. But the average man likes force. That is 
why he chances the ditch and death in a motor car or 
a two thousand feet fall from an aeroplane. And force 
brings things to pass. It does not stop, fortunately does 
not, because of a wreck in the ditch or a fall from the 
clouds. But there is force in established orbits, when it 
has taken form and retained energy, where it has come 
out of star mist and is a sun. 

Colonel Roosevelt had force well in hand. It was an 
endowment. It was not idly expended, if sometimes it 
seemed erratic. It did not exhaust those who came in 
contact with it. Its expression was greatest in himself. 
It made him impatient with Taft's slow and judicial 
statesmanship and Wilson's " single-track mind " which 
worked on a schedule of " waiting and watching." 

But it v/as a tremendous magnet. No man drew 
such crowds without arts or tricks on all occasions. 
They rallied to him instinctively. Whether you agreed 
with him or not, he agreed with himself. And you found 
it difficult to get away from his forcible thinking. 

He walked with a firm stride. He chopped a tree 
like a lumber jack on a wager. He liked a horse that 
would throw a good rider. You never heard of his 
hunting partridges. He himted lions and tigers. The 
brook trout did not beguile him. He fished for tarpon 

69 



Theodore Roosevelt 

and shark. Is it a wonder that the virile manhood of 
America followed such a leader? They could disagree 
with him, but they were forced by force to follow him. 

Had he been president when Germany threatened 
little heroic Belgium, a challenge would have been hurled 
across the ocean that would have prevented the war, 
or if not we would have closed it two years sooner. 
Germany needed a friend like Theodore Roosevelt, who 
would have warned her of the peril of her insane madness 
in rushing into wai" against the civilized world and who 
would not have dallied an hour in preparation for the 
defense of civilization and of the firesides of all lands. 
His defense would have begun before the war began. 

Colonel Roosevelt was a courageous man and the 
people like courage. It was not a blustering courage. 
It was not braggadocio. There was no swagger about it. 
Its highest test was in the face of dissenting public 
opinion. It never flinched in the face of the clamor of 
politics. 

What is right? What ought to be done? It might 
not always be right as subsequent events proved, but to 
him with the light he had it was right. That was enough. 
It is certain that men whether in political agreement or 
political opposition conceded his courage. He was 
incapable of making the mistake of the trimmer. He 
never cultivated his fortunes or popular favor at the 
expense of his manliood. It is a fatal mistake which has 
defeated many a gi-eat man who was great in all but his 
courage. The people are always sensitive to this char- 
acteristic. It is as useless as the habit of the ostrich in 
putting his head in the sand to escape his pursuers. 

70 



Theodore Roosevelt 

The people will excuse mistakes but they have 
contempt for a coward. 

The man who dodges his vote, who hides his con- 
victions lest some one disagree with him, is always 
detected and quickly relegated to the rear. Respect 
a man who honestly disagrees with you. Despise a man 
who is afraid of you. 

Roosevelt's courage was an element of strength. 
It was courage to defend an opinion cind it was courage to 
correct a mistake. Moral courage is greater than physical 
courage. " You are scared," said a soldier to a fellow 
soldier whom he saw white and trembling as the battle 
began. " Yes," was the reply, " if you were as scared 
as I am you would run." 

When Roosevelt was about to give an interview on 
the piratical sinking of the Lusitania an intimate friend 
who wanted him to answer deliberately suggested that 
there were four hundred thousand German votes in this 
country. Aroused he said, "If there were four million 
I would condemn this fiendish act! " And he gave out 
that phillipic which awoke the land to war. 

He was clean. No bribe stuck to his hand. And 
the people like that. His domestic life required no 
apology. There were never whispers of impure liaisons 
in his neighborhood. He never led two lives, nor had 
two homes. His personal life required no explanation 
nor apology. When he was away from home his face 
was alvv^ays set homeward and you could no more face 
him in other directions than you could change the instinct 
of a carrier pigeon. And the people like that. Domestic 
impurity and infidelity is the dry rot of society and states. 

71 



Theodore Roosevelt 

The pure home is the foundation of civilization. It has 
been tremendously emphasized in the late war, when 
virtue has been made the merchandise of a country that 
started out to spread its kultur over the world by rapine 
and the pitiless sword. The noblest thing about Roose- 
velt is his home life. It was a holy example. 

Another trait was the buoyancy, fullness and 
exuberance of his life. No man enjoyed life more. And 
the people like that. You may say that it was a radiancy 
of health. We might think so but for the last two or 
three years of fatal illness. Coming or going from the 
hospital, wrenched vnth rheumatic pains, burning with 
fever, he was always feeling " bully." It is a great thing 
in this world of so many ills and misfortunes and sorrows 
if one can carry hope on the outside and let any remnant 
of happiness shine through. 

No one can tell the agony of that solitary sorrow 
when a grave was made on a foreign battlefield. But he 
did not ask his fellow man to help him carry it. He 
carried no emblem of death. He asked for more things 
to do, to think about, and to say. 

He said that he could not expect that four sons could 
go into war with the peril of high explosives and all 
return. It was tlie measure of his prompt sacrifice. An 
unspeakable cur kindled his wrath when he said that 
those boys were protected in safe positions by their 
father's influence. But the cloud soon passed and he 
was driving on, giving his own life to force that war to 
its conclusions by matching his pen against the sword. 

We will not ask why such a man was not used in 
such a war, why he was denied the privilege of some 

72 



Theodore Roosevelt 

active place at the front or in helpful counsel when clear 
thinking and prompt action were demanded. The 
American people do their own thinking and as a rule 
they think correctly. The answer will come and be 
written in letters that will bum the shame where it belongs. 

He must be an intensely narrow partisan who does 
not feel the loss that has fallen upon his country by the 
death of ex-President Roosevelt. 

The man we have hastily sketched, a statesman of 
such prescient vision and superb loyalty and courage, was 
tremendously needed in his own land in a time when 
latent Bolshevism and slumbering Red Socialism could be 
held in restraint only by men of the type of Colonel 
Roosevelt and men of whom he was the acknowledged 
captain. 

It is an hour that calls for brave men, wise men, 
American men without a taint or a remote mixture in 
their loyalty and with consecration to the principles of 
our fathers and mothers. Never have we needed as now a 
recrudescence of the old-time Americanism that has been 
overgrown with the poison ivy of imported destructive 
thought and teachings of the ignorant that threaten 
to choke and destroy its life. We need him to lead in 
the readjustment of our labor economy. 

We had looked to Colonel Roosevelt as the man 
whom the remnant of thinking men would follow and 
whose clear voice would restrain the mad hordes plunging 
on behind the red flag they know not why, a man who 
would not sacrifice his flag to his personal ambition, 
a man whose words weighed with the artisan and the 
working man because he never used them but always 

73 



Theodore Roosevelt 

served them, a man who in his one own personality 
would outnumber the thousands of riotous brutes, Hun- 
like in their instincts, seeking to apply the torch to the 
foundations of all government and law. 

That task to save our land and country is upon us 
without a leader. Striking evidences warn us that our 
laborers must be kept within bounds of citizenship and 
under self-restraint. That cannot be done by the political 
cvinning and chicanery that plays our government into 
the hands of any class at the price of its service at the 
polls. 

Mr. Roosevelt never magnified day labor above all 
foiTns of labor. He held it to its responsibility. The 
peril that has been increased in the past few years has 
been in exalting the working man's labor into the chief 
if not the only place of labor. As though none of the 
rest of us labor and as if there were no problems except 
to fill the working man's dinner pail! It is doubtless 
true that the working man has not always received his 
proportion of the world's incomes and profits. And it is 
equally true that transportation and business have 
suffered losses and depreciation which if not remedied 
will leave the laborer with an empty dinner pail. Busi- 
ness, capital, are the only sources from which he can 
fill his pail, — unless he steals and robs and kills as red- 
tongued and red-flagged socialism proposes to do, and 
that would last only until business is destroyed. Then 
what hope would be left to any man, rich or poor? 

There is no question tliat business has been guilty 
of profiteering the past two years. Much of it has taken 
high prices simply because it could. It has forced up 

74 



Theodore Roosevelt 

the cost of living without any justification. It has 
turned business in some cases into a den of thieves. 
When any man takes a price simply because he can get 
it, and from a man who is unable to pay it, he is a 
thief. 

But this has not been done by manufacturers and 
merchants only. It has been done by the honest, homy- 
handed farmer who raises wheat and com emd cattle, — 
though he usually suffers both at the beginning and the 
ending of high prices. He is the victim of the packer 
and the mill man who buys his wheat and sells him his 
grain, and of the middleman who takes a hundred per 
cent of profit for marketing his milk and his farm produce. 

It is plain enough that we are in swiftly increasing 
currents of a whirlpool where we need a leader to reverse 
the order of things, to place the labor of the laboring man 
in the Ust with the labor of the professional man, the 
merchant and the manufacturer, and make him take his 
chances with them, and stop the political caudle which 
places him at the top and all others at the bottom and 
robs the railroad, the steamship and all forms of business 
to keep him there. Men in the Legislature and in Congress 
and in great official positions have been doing our land 
immense mischief because they lacked the rugged stamina 
and wide-seeing statesmanship to maintain, at any political 
cost, sound economic proportions and order. They have 
tumed the country upside down and placed the labor 
unions on top. That is disastrous to labor and ruinous 
to any coimtry. You cannot run a wagon with the 
wheels on top. The axles are as important as the wheels. 
The wheels can carry nothing without tlie axles. The 



Theodore Roosevelt 

whole must harmonize in proper proportions and logical 
relations. It is a fatal thing when labor and capital 
pull apart. It is tearing the wagon to pieces. 

We want the artisan and day labor working man to 
have all the wage that business can pay him for an 
honest day's work. The more he has the better home 
he will have and the happier wife he will have and the 
better educated and better citizens his children will 
become and the better country we will have. Capital 
cannot afford not to pay him all that the business will 
pay him and leave a paying profit to the investments, 
the risks, the toil and wear and tear of the business. 
I want him to have reasonably short hours and reasonably 
long wages, but I want him to give an eqmvalent and be 
a man, an American man, a safe and useful citizen. 
That man and I are neighbors. We vote at the same 
poll. I work at the imiversity where I beg money to 
educate his sons and daughters and I am proud of them. 
But I hate and abhor the labor that would overturn 
business which it could neither create nor manage, that 
would smash machinery, kill men, starve and freeze 
communities to force increase of wages or the recognition 
of his organization as I do the Hun's mode of warfare 
and rapine. 

The laborer should be content with the reward of 
his own labors and not insist upon the income that 
belongs to the investments of his neighbor. The recent 
suggestion that the government should purchase the 
railroads and the laboring men should run them on shares 
with the government, and if there is a deficiency it should 
be covered by taxing the people, is crude enough and 

76 



Theodore Roosevelt 

idiotic enough for the Bolsheviki. It does not sound Uke 
the utterance of American citizens. 

One man may be as good as another, one man is 
as free as another. But one man is not as important 
as another. One man offers the v.'ork of his hands and 
he is important if intelligent, industrious and faithful. 
Another man has by superior ability secured and saved 
thousands of dollars of money. He may have justly 
inherited it. This man offers his great ability and the 
money he has saved equal perhaps to a hundred or 
a thousand men. He has a right to greater pay in 
proportion to what the supplies. And he works harder 
than the man who works only with his hands, works 
earlier and later and with anxiety the other man does not 
know. 

Our country needs as never before a supreme leader 
to set in order business men and working men that each 
may have a just appreciation of the other and that all 
may secure to all liberty of action. We thought we 
had that man in Theodore Roosevelt. It is a frightful 
arena for the demagogue of destructive socialism and 
Bolshevism. It is no time for the coward and the trimmer. 
It is the hour of our supreme peril. Every man without 
regard to party politics must have trembled when they 
told us that Theodore Roosevelt was dead. Labor lost 
an intelligent, fearless friend. Our coimtry lost a great 
leader in its most perilous field. 

It is a time when Colonel Roosevelt was saying some 
vigorous and statesmanlike words with regard to our 
world-wide problems. They were wholesome. They 
centered on our own country. They contemplated 

77 



Theodore Roosevelt 

safety first for America. They looked to the future of 
America. They remembered Washington's caution 
against foreign entanglements. 

The great and first problems over there today is 
the relation to one another of adjacent lands recently 
at war. That takes precedence over the League of 
Nations. The first question is the settlement of new 
boundaries, indemnities and guarantees of safety to 
invaded countries. Those are live questions, and 
immensely practical, to be settled by nations concerned. 

How far are we called upon to mix in them? What 
have we to do with rimning boimdary lines between 
Poland and Czecho-Slovak, or Jugo-Slav and Italy, 
or in the new republics of Germany and Austria? What 
business have we with the amount of indemnity to be 
paid by Germany to England, or to France, or to Belgium 
or to Italy? It seems to me we have absolutely no 
business with these questions, but should come home 
tomorrow so far as they are concerned. I do not object 
to our going over the ocean in the person of our president 
and his retinue to secure expressions of approval for 
what we have done in the war by music and salvos of 
artillery and displays of gold plate and livery, if anyone 
wants that thing. It is a matter of taste and that has 
a wide range. After the great pressing questions between 
the nations concerned are settled by the nations con- 
cerned, there would be time to take up the question 
of a League of Nations and the Freedom of the Seas, 
and other of the fourteen international beatitudes. 
W^e are not certain that we oppose the League of Nations 
or that we favor it. We are certain that we have not 

78 



Theodore Roosevelt 

had time to know what we think yet. Our great delibera- 
tive body has not been permitted to discuss that question 
without the charge of partisan motives. 

We need time for our Senate, that body which used 
to be recognized as of co-ordinate authority and dignity, 
to discuss the momentous questions on which we occupy 
at least a border place. 

We needed someone like Roosevelt to show us that 
we- had the cart harnessed before the horse. Other men 
might say it and the world would not listen. Men 
listened to him. 

It seems to me that having gone in late, almost 
fatally late, it would have been modest when our boys 
had finished their magnificent fighting to quietly fold 
our tents and come home and stay at home ourselves until 
we could settle as a people in our Congress, through 
our representatives, the only question that concerned us, 
the vast principles on which all nations should conduct 
themselves toward one another. This would have been 
American. We have never permitted one citizen to 
make our laws nor to dictate terms beyond our written 
instrument. No man rules us. No man is king over us. 
We cannot afford the incursion of any man's reference to 
Americans as " my people." That was the prerogative of 
Kaisers and Czars. We cannot afford the humiliation 
of dictated terms for the remaking of Europe through 
one man without even the knowledge of our Senate or 
of the people as to what those terms are. Never has 
there been any such autocracy in the history of our land. 
Never will it be attempted again if we are to remain 
a free people. 

79 



Theodore Roosevelt 

The conditions of peace have not been sent to 
European nations by the American people. But they 
have been taken over in utter defiance and contempt of 
the mind of our people. The people have not been 
permitted to know what the supreme dictator himself 
means by them. We have transplanted the rule of the 
Kaiser and Czar into America and our President has done 
what the King of England would not dare to do, and 
what if he did do would cost him his crown. 

Will you tell me how long the American government 
will stand after one man becomes that government? 
Is it not opening a way for our I. W. W. and our anarchistic 
Red Bolshevists to defy our constitution, our courts 
and our executives? 

We must obey our traditions and our imwritten 
laws and practices of a hundred and fifty years if we 
expect others to obey them. We must not compromise 
our form of government. It is not enough to say that it 
is better done as it is being done. That is far from 
certain and if it were true it is too perilous to take the 
chance. Our only safety is within the law and traditions 
that have become law. 

There are too many wild elements among us trying 
to usurp our body politic, for us to leave any bars down 
or any gates open. The minute we disregard our con- 
stitution and make a substitution of personal choice 
or permit any official assumptions beyond the terms 
laid down by our forms of action we are in danger that 
liberty will be taken by destructive forces and that all 
law and order will be over-ridden and trampled under 
foot. The only way we can safely secure obedience 

80 



Theodore Roosevelt 

to law by the people is for their representatives and 
servants in all the offices from the lowest to the highest 
to lead them witli law. I f we do not they will overwhelm 
us without law. Nothing breeds riot with the destruction 
of life and property like license with our institutions 
by those set to sacredly defend them and obey them. 

Our carelessness in recent years has permitted 
broods of vipers to hatch and sting us in nearly all our 
considerable communities. It is high time to sound 
a warning and return to the democracy of our fathers who 
dared not attempt national life and government without 
a national constitution which they defended with their 
lives and which they permitted no man carelessly or 
ignorantly to ignore and set aside. In addition to the 
peril that threatens by a loosening of reverence for the 
Americanism which ex-President Roosevelt championed 
with his last breath, is the price which we must pay for 
mixing in the disputes among European nations that do 
not concern us. Are we going to settle affairs over there 
and they have no right of parity to settle things to 
suit themselves over here? 

We fought to defend our pathways across the seas 
and to make it safe for our people to travel them. We 
fought to hurl back the world's foe of small and defense- 
less peoples. Though coming late we helped finish that 
work. That was all we had to do until our Senate 
should act on the larger question of the future. And 
that was the work for the American people to do. Our 
legislatures are our people. Our American Congress is 
the American people. And our people have a right 
to speak tlirough their Congress and it is their duty 

81 



Theodore Roosevelt 

to speak. Their Congress cannot be ignored. That is 
riding over the people themselves. And they cannot 
permit themselves to be ignored without inviting disaster 
to their land and country. 

There must be a day of reckoning, immediate and 
decisive reckoning. Colonel Roosevelt exhorted us " not 
to sag back in our Americanism." Where has our 
Americanism gone in the last six weeks? It has been put 
in a bag and carried out to sea. And the men who 
miss it and demand that it be returned are charged 
with disloyalty and partisan politics! Thank God that 
was one thing that Theodore Roosevelt did not fear 
when he knew his cause was just. And why should 
you and I? 

In the name of our fathers, where are we going to 
and what are we going from? Are we an American 
republic? Are we a nation of freemen? Can anyone 
wonder that unwashed Bolshevists and Red Flag Socialists 
will dare to spit upon us and trample our flag in the 
dust of the streets! 

Can we afford to lose by death our bravest citizen, 
our fearless champion of the whole people, our defender 
of the constitution which secured to us the government 
of the people, by the people, the only safe Magna Charta! 
We have lost in our champion of a free America ten 
thousand men, — ten thousand great men as great men 
are measured today. 

I did not always agree with all he did. I do not 
accept the doctrine that only good must be said of the 
dead. A man's character must carry his reputation in 
life and in death. And we should see men as we knew 

82 



Theodore Roosevelt 

them in life or death. A discriminating appreciation is 
the most just. With all impulses and mistakes reckoned, 
and there were some, and sometimes serious, we bade 
farewell a few hours ago to the greatest American citizen 
since Abraham Lincoln. 

It seems to us that he has gone too soon. 

But God reigns. What has been will be. Other 
men equal to their times will appear. They will be unlike, 
as Roosevelt differed from Lincoln. All along the ages 
great men have appeared who seemed indispensable 
to the leadership of their times. But when they went 
the world did not stop. In some instances they con- 
tributed more by their death than by their life. When 
Lincoln fell under the assassin's bullet a calamity over- 
whelmed the nation. We felt, and some of us continue 
to feel, that disaster came upon reconstruction and that 
things would have been far different if he had lived. 
The breach would have been sooner healed. The North 
and South would have been one long ago. We could 
not understand it. We cannot measure the divine 
movements, the infinite wisdom, the things which He 
permits that we would not permit. It seems to us that 
the death of Roosevelt was a great calamity just now 
when so many destructive elements lurk in the shadows 
of timid men, to spring upon us and clutch our national 
throat. They feared him enough to shoot him years ago. 
They feared him more the day he died. Hell broke out 
with wild laughter and shouts. A mighty obstacle was 
removed. Why did God do it? Perhaps our faith is 
misplaced. We put our faith in men, great men, and 
they fall. Then we trust God. 

83 



Theodore Roosevelt 

God seems to depend upon men, but when we think 
He is trusting them most and that He most depends 
upon them He removes them. He moves in His 
mysterious way, His wonders to perform, both by using 
them and not using them. 

It is our time to put our faith in Him who rules 
over all. 

Our country will stand. It is builded upon divine 
principles, its industries, its business, its homes, its 
government, its morals are founded on God's law. And 
that never wears out. It cannot be overthrown. Try to 
dig imder it. You cannot, it is as deep as the throne 
of right and justice. 

It will take time to adjust ourselves. But our 
great leaders do not carry away with them the principles 
of our national integrity. These principles remain for 
other men to use and God furnishes those men. 

The greatest fame that can come to men is to be 
used in God's critical times, to help make constructive 
epochs, to see them when they come, to use them with 
no fear but the fear of God, to welcome consequences, 
to venture all personal ambition and profit, to be used for 
the common good, to live lives of service for all men, 
that is to learn the great lesson from above that to save 
one's life is to lose it, to lose one's life is to save it. 

So far as men follow these standards their immortality 
is safe. Their works cannot perish. What they put into 
their country cannot be withdrawn from it. 

The greatest debt we owe to Theodore Roosevelt 
today is for his Americanism, his all- Americanism, boldly, 
fearlessly declared in a time when perilous isms of all 

84 



Theodore Roosevelt 

kinds are striving to undermine our country. Mr. 
Roosevelt insisted that there can be but one national 
ism in this broad land and that is Americanism, — one 
loyalty, one flag, one common language, one great and 
prosperous people. 

Selection — " How Firm a Foundation," by the 
quartet. 

HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION 

How firm a foundation, ye saints of tlie Lord, 
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word! 
What more can He say than to you He hath said, 
You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled? 

■' Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed, 
For I am Thy God, and will still give thee aid; 
I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand. 
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand. 

" When through the deep waters, I call thee to go. 
The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow; 
For I will be with thee thy trouble to bless, 
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress. 

■' When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie. 
My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply; 
The flame shall not hurt thee: I only design 
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine. 

" E'en down to old age, all My people shall prove, 
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love; 
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn. 
Like lambs they shall still in my bosom be borne. 



" The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose 
I will not, I will not desert to His foes; 
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, 
I'll never, no never, no never forsake." 

85 



Theodore Roosevelt 

The Ch.'MRMAN. Benediction — Bishop Richard H. 
Nelson. The audience will please arise. 

Benediction — Bishop Richard H. Nelson, Albany 

Almighty Father, Who has raised up great men to 
bring us, Thy people, to a place of power and honor among 
the nations of the world, we beseech Thee to send Thy 
blessing upon those who are gathered together here to 
honor the memory of the gifted, patriotic, American 
citizen. And grant that we may learn from the example 
of his life to do our duty faithfully and fearlessly in these 
grave times, and, like him, be ready to sacrifice that 
which is dearest to us in life that our nation may be 
true to its ideals and may accomplish its mission in the 
world. 

We ask in the name of Christ, our Lord. Amen. 



86 



APPENDIX 



ADDRESS 



OF 



SENATOR HENRY CABOT LODGE 

OF MASSACHUSETTS 



IN HONOR OF 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

Ex-President of the United States 



BEFORE THE 



CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES 
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1919 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

A tower is fnllen, a star is set ! Alas ! Alas ! for Ceiin. 

THE words of lamentation from the old Moorish 
ballad, which in boyhood we used to recite, must, 
I think, have risen to many lips when the world 
was told that Theodore Roosevelt was dead. But what- 
ever the phrase the thought was instant and everywhere. 
Variously expressed, you heard it in the crowds about 
the bulletin boards, from the man in the street and the 
man on the railroads, from the farmer in the fields, the 
women in the shops, in the factories, and in the homes. 
The pulpit found in his life a text for sermons. The 
judge on the bench, the child at school, alike paused for 
a moment, conscious of a loss. The cry of sorrow came 
from men and women of all conditions, high and low, 
rich and poor, from the learned and the ignorant, from 
the multitude who had loved and followed him, and 
from those who had opposed and resisted him. The 
newspapers pushed aside the absorbing reports of the 
events of these fateful days and gave pages to the man 
who had died. Flashed beneath the ocean and through 
the air went the announcement of his death, and back 
came a world-wide response from courts and cabinets, 
from press and people, in other and far-distant lands. 
Through it all ran a golden thread of personal feeling 
which gleams so rarely in the somber formalism of public 
grief. Everywhere the people felt in their hearts that: 

A power was passing from tlie Earth 
To breathless Nature's dark abyss. 

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Theodore Roosevelt 

It would seem that here was a man, a private citizen, 
conspicuous by no office, with no glitter of power about 
him, no ability to reward or punish, gone from the 
earthly life, who must have been unusual even among 
the leaders of men, and who thus demands our serious 
consideration. 

This is a thought to be borne in mind to-day. We 
meet to render honor to the dead, to the great American 
whom we mourn. But there is something more to be 
done. We must remember that when History, with 
steady hand and calm eyes, free from the passions of 
the past, comes to make up the final account, she will 
call as her principal witnesses the contemporaries of 
the man or the event awaiting her verdict. Here and 
elsewhere the men and women who knew Theodore 
Roosevelt or who belong to his period will give public 
utterance to their emotions and to their judgments in 
regard to him. This will be part of the record to which 
the historian will turn when our living present has become 
the past, of which it is his duty to write. Thus is there 
a responsibility placed upon each one of us who will 
clearly realize that here, too, is a duty to posterity, 
whom we would fain guide to the truth as we see it, 
and to whose hands we commit our share in the history 
of our beloved country — that history so much of which 
was made under his leadership. 

We can not approach Theodore Roosevelt along the 
beaten paths of eulogy or satisfy ourselves with the 
empty civilities of commonplace funeral tributes, for he 
did not make his life journey over main-traveled roads, 
nor was he ever commonplace. Cold and pompous 

90 



Theodore Roosevelt 

formalities would be unsuited to him who was devoid 
of affectation, who was never self-conscious, and to whom 
posturing to draw the public gaze seemed not only repel- 
lent but vulgar. He had that entire simplicity of manners 
and modes of life which is the crowning result of the 
highest culture and the finest nature. Like Cromwell, 
he would always have said: "Paint me as I am." 
In that spirit, in his spirit of devotion to truth's simplicity, 
I shall try to speak of him today in the presence of the 
representatives of the great Government of which he was 
for seven years the head. 

The rise of any man from humble or still more from 
sordid beginnings to the heights of success always and 
naturally appeals strongly to the imagination. It fur- 
nishes a vivid contrast which is as much admired as it 
is readily imderstood. It still retains the wonder which 
such success awakened in the days of hereditary law- 
givers and high privileges of birth. Birth and fortune, 
however, mean much less now than two centuries ago. 
To climb from the place of a printer's boy to the highest 
rank in science, politics, and diplomacy would be far 
easier to-day than in the eighteenth century, given 
a genius like Franklin to do it. Moreover the real 
marvel is in the soaring achievement itself, no matter 
what the origin of the man who comes by " the people's 
unbought grace to rule his native land " and who on 
descending from the official pinnacle still leads and 
influences thousands upon thousands of his fellow men. 

Theodore Roosevelt had the good fortune to be bom 
of a well-known, long-established family, with every 
facility for education and with an atmosphere of patriotism 

91 



Theodore Roosevelt 

and disinterested service both to country and humanity- 
all about him. In his father he had before him an 
example of lofty public spirit, from which it would have 
been difficult to depart. But if the work of his ancestors 
relieved him from the hard struggle which meets an 
unaided man at the outset, he also lacked the spur of 
necessity to prick the sides of his intent, in itself no small 
loss. As a balance to the opportunity which was his 
without labor, he had not only the later difficulties 
which come to him to whom fate has been kind at the 
start; he had also spread before him the temptations 
inseparable from such inherited advantages as fell to his 
lot — temptations to a Ufe of sports and pleasure, to 
lettered ease, to an amateur's career in one of the fine 
arts, perhaps to a money-making business, likewise an 
inheritance, none of them easily to be set aside in obedi- 
ence to the stern rule that the larger and more facile 
the opportunity the greater and more insistent the respon- 
sibility. How he refused to tread the pleasant paths that 
opened to him on all sides and took the instant way 
which led over the rough road of toil and action his 
life discloses. 

At the beginning, moreover, he had physical diffi- 
culties not lightly to be overcome. He was a delicate 
child, suffering acutely from attacks of asthma. He was 
not a strong boy, was retiring, fond of books, and with 
an intense but solitary devotion to natural history. As 
his health gradually improved he became possessed by 
the belief, although he perhaps did not then formulate 
it, that in the fields of active life a man could do that 
which he willed to do; and this faith was with him to 



Theodore Roosevelt 

the end. It became very evident when he went to Har- 
vard. He made himself an athlete by sheer hard work. 
Hampered by extreme near-sightedness, he became none 
the less a formidable boxer and an excellent shot. He 
stood high in scholarship, but as he worked hard, so 
he played hard, and was popular in the university and 
beloved by his friends. For a shy and delicate boy all 
this meant solid achievement, as well as imusual deter- 
mination and force of will. Apparently he took early 
to heart and carried out to fulfillment the noble lines of 
Clough's Dipsychus: 

In light things 
Prove thou the arms thou long'st to glorify. 
Nor fear to worl^ up from the lowest ranks 
Whence come great Nature's Captains. And high deeds 
Haunt not the fringy edges of the fight, 
But the pell-mell of men. 

When a young man comes out of college he descends 
suddenly from the highest place in a little world to a 
very obscure corner in a great one. It is something of 
a shock, and there is apt to be a chill in the air. Unless 
the young man's life has been planned beforehand and 
a place provided for him by others, wliich is exceptional, 
or unless he is fortunate in a strong and dominating 
purpose or talent which drives him to science or art or 
some particular profession, he finds himself at this period 
pausing and wondering where he can get a grip upon the 
vast and confused world into which he has been plunged. 

It is a trying and only too frequently a disheart- 
ening experience, this looking for a career, this effort to 
find employment in a huge and hurrying crowd which 

93 



Theodore Roosevelt 

appears to have no use for the newcomer. Roosevelt, 
thus cast forth on his own resources — his father, so 
beloved by him, having died two years before — fell to 
work at once, turning to the study of the law, which he 
did not like, and to the completion of a history of the 
War of 1812 which he had begun while still in college. 
With few exceptions, young beginners in the difficult art 
of writing are either too exuberant or too dry. Roosevelt 
said that his book was as dry as an encyclopedia, thus 
erring in precisely the direction one would not have 
expected. The book, be it said, was by no means so 
dry as he thought it, and it had some other admirable 
qualities. It was clear and thorough, and the battles 
by sea and land, especially the former, which involved 
the armaments and crews, the size and speed of the 
ships engaged in the famous frigate and sloop actions, 
of which we won eleven out of thirteen, were given with 
a minute accuracy never before attempted in the accounts 
of this war, and which made the book an authority, a 
position it holds to this day. 

This was a good deal of sound work for a boy's 
first year out of college. But it did not content Roose- 
velt. Inherited influences and inborn desires made him 
earnest and eager to render some public service. In 
pursuit of this aspiration he joined the Twenty-first 
Assembly District Republican Association of the city of 
New York, for by such machinery all politics were car- 
ried on in those days. It was not an association com- 
posed of his normal friends; in fact, the members were 
not only eminently practical persons but they were 
inclined to be rough in their methods. They were not 

94 



Theodore Roosevelt 

dreamers, nor were they laboring under many illusions. 
Roosevelt went among them a complete stranger. He 
differed from them with entire frankness, concealed noth- 
ing, and by his strong and simple democratic ways, his 
intense Americanism, and the magical personal attrac- 
tion which went with him to the end, made some devoted 
friends. One of the younger leaders, "Joe " Murray, 
believed in him, became especially attached to him, and 
so continued until death separated them. Through Mur- 
ray's efforts he was elected to the New York Assembly 
in 1881, and thus only one year after leaving college his 
public career began. He was just twenty-three. 

Very few men make an effective State reputation 
in their first year in the lower branch of the State Legis- 
lature. I never happened to hear of one who made a 
national reputation in such a body. Roosevelt did both. 
When he left the Assembly after three years' service he 
was a national figure, well known, and of real impor- 
tance, and also a delegate at large from the great State 
of New York to the Republican national convention of 
1884, where he played a leading part. Energy, ability, 
and the most entire courage were the secret of his extra- 
ordinary success. It was a time of flagrant corporate 
influence in the New York Legislature, of the "Black 
Horse Cavalr^^" of a group of members who made money 
by sustaining corporation measures or by levying on cor- 
porations and capital through the familiar artifice of 
" strike bills." Roosevelt attacked them all openly and 
aggressively and never silently or quietly. He fought 
for the impeachment of a judge solely because he believed 
the judge corrupt, which surprised some of his political 

95 



Theodore Roosevelt 

associates of both parties, there being, as one practical 
thinker observes, " no politics in politics." He failed to 
secure the impeachment, but the fight did not fail, nor 
did the people forget it; and despite^ perhaps because 
of — the enemies he made, he was twice reelected. He 
became at the same time a distinct, well-defined figure to 
the American people. He had touched the popular 
imagination. In this way he performed the unexampled 
feat of leaving the New York Assembly, which he had 
entered three years before an unknown boy, with a 
national reputation and with his name at least known 
throughout the United States. He was twenty-six 
years old. 

WTien he left Chicago at the close of the national 
convention in June, 1884, he did not return to New 
York, but went West to the " Bad Lands " of the Little 
Missouri valley, where he had purchased a ranch in the 
previous year. The early love of natural history which 
never abated had developed into a passion for hvinting 
and for life in the open. He had begun in the wilds of 
Maine and then turned to the west and to a cattle ranch 
to gratify both tastes. The life appealed to him and he 
came to love it. He herded and rounded up his cattle, 
he worked as a cow-puncher, only rather harder than 
any of them, and in the intervals he hunted and shot 
big game. He also came in contact with men of a new 
type, rough, sometimes dangerous, but always vigorous 
and often picturesque. With them he had the same 
success as with the practical politicians of the Twenty- 
first Assembly District, although they were widely dif- 
ferent specimens of mankind. But all alike were human 

96 



Theodore Roosevelt 

at bottom and so was Roosevelt. He argued with them, 
rode with them, camped with them, played and joked 
with them, but was always master of his outfit. They 
respected him and also liked him, because he was at 
all times simple, straightforward, outspoken, and sin- 
cere. He became a popular and well-known figure in 
that western country and was regarded as a good fel- 
low, a " white man," entirely fearless, thoroughly good- 
natured and kind, never quarrelsome, and never safe to 
trifle with, bully, or threaten. The life and experiences 
of that time found their way into a book, "The Hunting 
Trips of a Ranchman," interesting in description and 
adventure and also showing a marked literary quality. 

In 1886 he ran as Republican candidate for mayor 
of New York and might have been elected had his own 
party stood by him. But many excellent men of Repub- 
lican faith — the " timid good," as he called them — 
panic-stricken by the formidable candidacy of Henry 
George, flocked to the support of Mr. Abram Hewitt, 
the Democratic candidate, as the man most certain to 
defeat the menacing champion of single taxation. Roose- 
velt was beaten, but his campaign, which was entirely 
his own and the precursor of many others, his speeches 
with their striking quality then visible to the country 
for the first time, all combined to fix the attention of 
the people upon the losing candidate. Roosevelt was 
the one of the candidates who was most interesting, and 
again he had touched the imagination of the people and 
cut a little deeper into the popular consciousness and 
memory. 

Two years more of private life, devoted to his home, 

97 



Theodore Roosevelt 

where his greatest happiness was always found, to his 
ranch, to reading and writing books, and then came an 
active part in the campaign of 1888, resulting in the 
election of President Harrison, who made him civil ser- 
vice commissioner in the spring of 1889. He was in 
his thirty-first year. Civil service reform as a practical 
question was then in its initial stages. The law estab- 
lishing it, limited in extent and forced through by a 
few leaders of both parties in the Senate, was only six 
years old. The promoters of the reform, strong in quality, 
but weak in numbers, had compelled a reluctant accept- 
ance of the law by exercising a balance-of-power vote in 
certain States and districts. It had few earnest sup- 
porters in Congress, some lukewarm friends, and many 
strong opponents. All the active politicians were prac- 
tically against it. Mr. Conkling had said that when 
Dr. Johnson told Boswell " that patriotism was the last 
refuge of a scoundrel " he was ignorant of the possibilities 
of the word " reform," and this witticism met with a 
large response. 

Civil service reform, meaning the establishment of 
a classified service and the removal of routine adminis- 
trative offices from politics, had not reached the masses 
of the people at all. The average voter knew and cared 
nothing about it. When six years later Roosevelt resigned 
from the commission the great body of the people knew 
well v^^hat civil service refonn meant, large bodies of 
voters cared a great deal about it, and it was established 
and spreading its control. We have had many excellent 
men who have done good work in the civil service com- 
mission, although that work is neither adventurous nor 

98 



Theodore Roosevelt 

exciting and rarely attracts public attention, but no one 
has ever forgotten that Theodore Roosevelt was once 
civil service commissioner. 

He found the law stmggling for existence, laughed 
at, sneered at, surrounded by enemies in Congress, and 
with but few fighting friends. He threw himself into 
the fray. Congress investigated the commission about 
once a year, which was exactly what Roosevelt desired. 
Armually, too, the opponents of the reform would try 
to defeat the appropriation for the commission, and this 
again was playing into Roosevelt's hands, for it led 
to debates, and the newspapers as a rule sustained the 
reform. Senator Gorman mourned in the Senate over 
the cruel fate of a " bright young man " who was unable 
to tell on examination the distance of Baltimore from 
China, and thus was deprived of his inalienable right 
to serve his country in the postoffice. Roosevelt proved 
that no such question had ever been asked and requested 
the name of the " bright young man." The name was 
not forthcoming, and the victim of a question never 
asked goes down nameless to posterity in the Congres- 
sional Record as merely a " bright yoimg man." Then 
General Grosvenor, a leading Republican of the House, 
denounced the commissioner for crediting his district 
with an appointee named Rufus Putnam who was not 
a resident of the district, and Roosevelt produced a 
letter from the general recommending Rufus Putnam as 
a resident of his district and a constituent. All this 
was unusual. Hitherto it had been a safe amusement 
to ridicule and jeer at civil service reform, and here was 
a commissioner who dared to reply vigorously to attacks, 

99 



Theodore Roosevelt 

and even to prove Senators and Congressmen to be 
wrong in their facts. The amusement of baiting the 
civil service commission seemed to be less inviting than 
before, and, worse still, the entertaining features seemed 
to have passed to the public, who enjoyed and approved 
the commissioner who disregarded etiquette and fought 
hard for the law he was appointed to enforce. The law 
suddenly took on new meaning and became clearly visible 
in the public mind, a great service to the cause of good 
government. 

After six years' service in the civil service com- 
mission Roosevelt left Washington to accept the position 
of president of the board of police commissioners of 
the city of New York, which had been offered to him 
by Mayor Strong. It is speaking within bounds to say 
that the history of the police force of New York has 
been a checkered one in which the black squares have 
tended to predominate. The task which Roosevelt con- 
fronted was then, as always, difficult, and the machinery 
of four commissioners and a practically irremovable 
chief made action extremely slow and uncertain. Roose- 
velt set himself to expel politics and favoritism in appoint- 
ments and promotions and to crush corruption every- 
where. In some way he drove through the obstacles 
and effected great improvements, although permanent 
betterment was perhaps impossible. Good men were 
appointed and meritorious men promoted as never before, 
while the corrupt and dangerous officers were punished 
in a number of instances, sufficient, at least, to check 
and discourage evildoers. Discipline was improved, and 
the force became very loyal to the chief commissioner, 

100 



Theodore Roosevelt 

because they learned to realize that he was fighting for 
right and justice without fear or favor. The results were 
also shown in the marked decrease of crime, which judges 
pointed out from the bench. Then, too, it was to be 
observed that a New York police commissioner suddenly 
attracted the attention of the country. The work which 
was being done by Roosevelt in New York, his mid- 
night walks tlarough the worst quarters of the great city, 
to see whether the guardians of the peace did their 
duty, which made the newspapers compare him to Haroun 
Al Raschid, all appealed to the popular imagination. A 
purely local office became national in his hands, and his 
picture appeared in the shops of European cities. There 
was something more than vigor and picturesqueness 
necessary to explain these phenomena. The truth is 
that Roosevelt was really laboring through a welter of 
details to carry out certain general principles which 
went to the very roots of society and government. He 
wished the municipal administration to be something 
far greater than a business man's administration, which 
was the demand that had triumphed at the polls. He 
wanted to make it an administration of the working- 
men, of the dwellers in the tenements, of the poverty 
and suffering which haunted the back streets and liidden 
purlieus of the huge city. The people did not formu- 
late these purposes as they watched what he was doing, 
but they felt them and understood them by that instinct 
which is often so keen in vast bodies of men. The man 
who was toiling in the seeming obscurity of the New 
York police commission again became very distinct to 
his fellow countrymen and deepened tlieir consciousness 

101 



Theodore Roosevelt 

of his existence and their comprehension of his purposes 
and aspirations. 

Striking as was the effect of this police work, it 
only lasted for two years. In 1897 he was offered by 
President McKinley, whom he had energetically sup- 
ported in the preceding campaign, the position of assist- 
ant secretary of the navy. He accepted at once, for the 
place and the work both appealed to him most strongly. 
The opportunity did not come without resistance. The 
president, an old friend, liked him and believed in him, 
but the secretary of the navy had doubts, and also 
fears that Roosevelt might be a disturbing and restless 
assistant. There were many politicians, too, especially 
in his own State, whom his activities as civil service and 
police commissioner did not delight, and these men 
opposed him. But his friends were powerful and devoted, 
and the president appointed him. 

His new place had to him a peculiar attraction. 
He loved the navy. He had written its brilliant history 
in the War of 1812. He had done all in his power in 
stimulating public opinion to support the " new navy " 
we were just then beginning to build. That war was 
coming with Spain he had no doubt. We were impre- 
pared, of course, even for such a war as this, but Roose- 
velt set himself to do what could be done. The best 
and most farseeing officers rallied round him, but the 
opportunities were limited. There was much in detail 
accomplished which can not be described here, but two 
acts of his which had very distinct effect upon the for- 
tunes of the war must be noted. He saw very plainly — 
although most people never perceived it at all — that 

102 



Theodore Roosevelt 

the Philippines would be a vital point in any war with 
Spain. For this reason it was highly important to have 
the right man in command of the Asiatic squadron. 
Roosevelt was satisfied that Dewey was the right man, 
and that his rival was not. He set to work to secure 
the place for Dewey. Through the aid of the Senators 
from Dewey's native state and others, he succeeded. 
Dewey was ordered to the Asiatic squadron. Our rela- 
tions with Spain grew worse and worse. On February 
25, 1898, war was drawing very near, and that Saturday 
afternoon Roosevelt happened to be acting secretary and 
sent out the following cablegram : 

Dewey — Hongkong: 

Order the squadron, except the Monocacy, to Hongkong. Keep full 

of coal. In the event of declaration of war, Spain, your duty will be to 

see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then 

offensive operations in the Philippine Islands. Keep Olympia until 

further orders. 

Roosevelt. 

I believe he was never again permitted to be acting 
secretary. But the deed was done. The wise word of 
readiness had been spoken and was not recalled. War 
came, and as April closed, Dewey, all prepared, slipped 
out of Hongkong and on May 1st fought the battle of 
Manila Bay. 

Roosevelt, however, did not continue long in the 
Navy Department. Many of his friends felt that he 
was doing such admirable work there that he ought to 
remain, but as soon as war was declared he determined 
to go, and his resolution was not to be shaken. Nothing 
could prevent his fighting for his country when the 

103 



Theodore Roosevelt 

country was at war. Congress had authorized three 
volunteer regiments of cavalry, and the president and 
the secretary of war gave to Leonard Wood — then a 
surgeon in the regular army — as colonel, and to Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, as lieutenant colonel, authority to raise 
one of these regiments, known officially as the First 
United States Volunteer Cavalry, and to all the country 
as the " Rough Riders." The regiment was raised 
chiefly in the southwest and west, where Roosevelt's 
popularity and reputation among the cowboys and the 
ranchmen brought many eager recruits to serve with 
him. After the regiment had been organized and equipped 
they had some difficulty in getting to Cuba, but Roose- 
velt as usual broke through all obstacles, and finally 
succeeded, with Colonel Wood, in getting away with two 
battalions, leaving one battalion and the horses behind. 
The regiment got into action immediately on land- 
ing and forced its way, after some sharp fighting in 
the jungle, to the high ground on which were placed 
the fortifications which defended the approach to San- 
tiago. Colonel Wood was almost immediately given 
command of a brigade, and this left Roosevelt colonel 
of the regiment. In the battle which ensued and which 
resulted in the capture of the positions commanding 
Santiago and the bay, the Rough Riders took a leading 
part, storming one of the San Juan heights, which they 
christened Kettle Hill, with Roosevelt leading the men 
in person. It was a dashing, gallant assault, well led 
and thoroughly successful. Santiago fell after the defeat 
of the fleet, and then followed a period of sickness and 
suffering — the latter due to unreadiness — where Roose- 

104 



Theodore Roosevelt 

velt did everything with his usual driving energy to 
save his men, whose loyalty to their colonel went with 
them through life. The war was soon over, but brief 
as it had been Roosevelt and his men had highly dis- 
tinguished themselves, and he stood out in the popular 
imagination as one of the conspicuous figures of the 
conflict. He brought his regiment back to the United 
States, where they were mustered out, and almost imme- 
diately afterwards he was nominated by the Republi- 
cans as their candidate for governor of the State of 
New York. The situation in New York was unfavorable 
for the Republicans, and the younger men told Senator 
Piatt, who dominated the organization and who had no 
desire for Roosevelt, that unless he was nominated they 
could not win. Thus forced, the organization accepted 
him, and it was well for the party that they did so. 
The campaign was a sharp one and very doubtful, but 
Roosevelt was elected by a narrow margin and assumed 
office at the beginning of the new year of 1899. He was 
then in his forty-first year. 

Many problems faced him and none were evaded. 
He was well aware that the " organization " under Sen- 
ator Piatt would not like many things he was sure to 
do, but he determined that he would have neither per- 
sonal quarrels nor faction fights. He knew, being blessed 
with strong common sense, that the Republican party, 
his own party, was the instrument by which alone he 
could attain his ends, and he did not intend that it 
should be blunted and made useless by internal strife. 
And yet he meant to have his own way. It was a diffi- 
cult role which he undertook to play, but he succeeded. 

105 



Theodore Roosevelt 

He had many differences with the organization man- 
agers, but he declined to lose his temper or to have a 
break, and he also refused to yield when he felt he was 
standing for the right and a principle was at stake. 
Thus he prevailed. He won on the canal question, 
changed the insurance commissioner, and carried the 
insurance legislation he desired. As in these cases, so 
it was in lesser things. In the police commission he 
had been strongly impressed by the dangers as he saw 
them of the undue and often sinister influence of busi- 
ness, finance, and great money interests upon govern- 
ment and politics. These feelings were deepened and 
broadened by his experience and observation on the 
larger stage of state administration. The belief that 
political equality must be strengthened and sustained 
by industrial equality and a larger economic opportunity 
was constantly in his thoughts until it became a govern- 
ing and guiding principle. 

Meantime he grew steadily stronger among the peo- 
ple, not only of his own state but of the country, for 
he was well known throughout the west, and there they 
were watching eagerly to see how the ranchman and 
colonel of Rough Riders, who had touched both their 
hearts and their imagination, was faring as governor of 
New York. The office he held is always regarded as 
related to the presidency, and this, joined to his strik- 
ing success as governor, brought him into the presiden- 
tial field wherever men speculated about the political 
future. It was universally agreed that McKinley was 
to be renominated, and so the talk turned to making 
Roosevelt vice-president. A friend wrote to him in the 

106 



Theodore Roosevelt 

summer of 1899 as to this drift of opinion, then assum- 
ing serious proportions. " Do not attempt," he said, 
" to thwart the popular desire. You are not a man 
nor are your close friends men who can plan, arrange, 
and manage you into office. You must accept the popu- 
lar wish, whatever it is, follow your star, and let the 
future care for itself. It is the tradition of our politics, 
and a very poor tradition, that the vice-presidency is 
a shelf. It ought to be, and there is no reason why it 
should not be, a stepping-stone. Put there by the popu- 
lar desire, it would be so to you." This view, quite 
naturally, did not commend itself to Governor Roosevelt 
at the moment. He was doing valuable work in New 
York; he was deeply engaged in important reforms which 
he had much at heart and which he wished to carry 
through; and the vice-presidency did not attract him. 
A year later he v;as at Philadelphia, a delegate at large 
from his state, with his mind unchanged as to the vice- 
presidency, while his New York friends, anxious to have 
him continue his work at Albany, were urging him to 
refuse. Senator Piatt, for obvious reasons, wished to 
make him vice-president, another obstacle to his taking 
it. Roosevelt forced the New York delegation to agi'ce 
on someone else for vice-president, but he could not 
hold the convention, nor could Senator Hanna, who 
wisely accepted the situation. Governor Roosevelt was 
nominated on the first ballot, all other candidates with- 
drawing. He accepted the nomination, little as he 
liked it. 

Thus when it came to the point he instinctively 
followed his star and grasped the unvacillating hand of 

107 



Theodore Roosevelt 

destiny. Little did he think that destiny would lead 
him to the White House through a tragedy which cut 
him to the heart. He was on a mountain in the Adiron- 
dacks when a guide made his way to him across the 
forest with a telegram telling him that McKinley, the 
wise, the kind, the gentle, with nothing in his heart but 
good will to all men, was dying from a woimd inflicted 
by an anarchist murderer, and that the vice-president 
must come to Buffalo at once. A rapid night drive 
through the woods and a special train brought him to 
Buffalo. McKinley was dead before he arrived, and that 
evening Governor Roosevelt was sworn in as president 
of the United States. 

Within the narrow limits of an address it is impos- 
sible to give an account of an administration of seven 
years which will occupy hundreds of pages when the 
history of the United States during that period is writ- 
ten. It was a memorable administration, memorable in 
itself and not by the accident of events, and large in 
its accomplishment. It began with a surprise. There 
were persons in the United States who had carefully 
cultivated, and many people who had accepted without 
thought, the idea that Roosevelt was in some way a 
dangerous man. They gloomily predicted that there 
would be a violent change in the policies and in the 
oftkers of the McKinley administration. But Roosevelt 
had not studied the history of his country in vain. He 
knew that in three of the four cases where vice-presidents 
had succeeded to the presidency through the death of 
the elected president, their coming had resulted in a 
violent shifting of policies and men, and. as a conse- 

i08 



Theodore Roosevelt 

quence, in most injurious dissensions, which in two cases 
at least proved fatal to the party in power. In all four 
instances the final obliteration of the vice-president who 
had come into power through the death of his chief 
was complete. President Roosevelt did not intend to 
permit any of these results. As soon as he came into 
office he announced that he intended to retain President 
McKinley's cabinet and to carry out his policies, which 
had been sustained at the polls. To those overzealous 
friends who suggested that he could not trust tlie appoin- 
tees of President McKinley and that he would be but 
a pallid imitation of his predecessor he replied tliat he 
thought, in any event, the administration would be his, 
and that if new occasions required new policies he felt 
that he could meet them, and that no one would suspect 
him of being a pallid imitation of anybody. His deci- 
sion, however, gratified and satisfied the country, and 
it was not apparent that Roosevelt was hampered in 
any way in carrying out his own policies by this wise 
refusal to make sudden and violent changes. 

Those who were alarmed about what he might do 
had also suggested that with his combative propensities 
he was likely to involve the country in war. Yet there 
never has been an administration, as afterwards ap- 
peared, when we were more perfectly at peace with all 
the world, nor were our foreign relations ever in danger 
of producing hostilities. But tliis was not due in the 
least to the adoption of a timid or yielding foreign pol- 
icy; on the contrary, it was owing to the firmness of the 
president in all foreign questions and the knowledge 
which other nations soon acquired that President Roose- 

109 



Theodore Roosevelt 

velt was a man who never threatened unless he meant 
to carry out his threat, the result being that he was 
not obliged to threaten at all. One of his earliest suc- 
cesses was forcing the settlement of the Alaskan bound- 
ary question, which was the single open question with 
Great Britain that was really dangerous and contained 
within itself possibilities of war. The accomplishment 
of this settlement was followed later, while Mr. Root 
was secretary of state, by the arrangement of all our 
outstanding differences with Canada, and during Mr. 
Root's tenure of office over thirty treaties were made 
with different nations, including a number of practical 
and valuable treaties of arbitration. When Germany 
started to take advantage of the difficulties in Venezuela 
the affair culminated in the dispatch of Dewey and the 
fleet to the Caribbean, the withdrawal of England at 
once, and the agreement of Germany to the reference 
of all subjects of difference to arbitration. It was Presi- 
dent Roosevelt whose good offices brought Russia and 
Japan together in a negotiation which closed the war 
between those two powers. It was Roosevelt's influence 
which contributed powerfully to settling the threatening 
controversy between Germany, France, and England in 
regard to Morocco, by the Algeciras conference. It was 
Roosevelt who sent the American fleet of battleships 
round the world, one of the most convincing peace 
movements ever made on behalf of the United States. 
Thus it came about that this president, dreaded at the 
begirming on account of his combative spirit, received 
the Nobel prize in 1906 as the person who had con- 
tributed most to the peace of the world in the preceding 

110 



Theodore Roosevelt 

years, and his contribution was the result of strength 
and knowledge and not of weakness. 

At home he recommended to Congress legislation 
which was directed toward a larger control of the rail- 
roads and to removing the privileges and curbing the 
power of great business combinations obtained through 
rebates and preferential freight rates. This legislation 
led to opposition in Congress and to much resistance 
by those affected. As we look back, this legislation, 
so much contested at the time, seems very moderate, 
but it was none the less momentous. President Roose- 
velt never believed in government ownership, but he 
was thoroughly in favor of strong and effective govern- 
ment supervision and regulation of what are now known 
generally as public utilities. He had a deep conviction 
that the political influence of financial and business 
interests and of great combinations of capital had become 
so great that the American people were beginning to 
distrust their own government, than which there could 
be no greater peril to the republic. By his measures, and 
by his general attitude toward capital and labor both, 
he sought to restore and maintain the confidence of the 
people in the government they had themselves created. 

In the Panama canal he left the most enduring, as 
it was the most visible, monument of his administration. 
Much criticized at the moment for his action in regard 
to it, which time since then has justified and which his- 
tory will praise, the great fact remains that the canal is 
there. He said himself that he made up his mind that 
it was his duty to establish the canal and have the 
debate about it afterwards, which seemed to him better 
111 



Theodore Roosevelt 

than to begin with indefinite debate and have no canal 
at all. This is a view which posterity both at home 
and abroad will accept and approve. 

These, passing over as we must in silence many 
other beneficent acts, are only a few of the most salient 
features of his administration, stripped of all detail and 
all enlargement. Despite the conflicts which some of 
his domestic policies had produced not only with his 
political opponents but within the Republican ranks, he 
was overwhelmingly reelected in 1904, and when the 
seven years had closed the country gave a like majority 
to his chosen successor, taken from his own cabinet. 
On the 4th of March, 1909, he returned to private life 
at the age of fifty, having been the youngest president 
known to our history. 

During the brief vacations which he had been able 
to secure in the midst of the intense activities of his 
public life after the Spanish War he had turned for 
enjoyment to expeditions in pursuit of big game in the 
wildest and most unsettled regions of the country. Open- 
air life and all its accompaniments of riding and hunt- 
ing were to him the one thing that brought him the 
most rest and relaxation. Now, having left the presi- 
dency, he was able to give full scope to the love of 
adventure, which had been strong with him from boy- 
hood. Soon after his retirement from office he went to 
Africa, accompanied by a scientific expedition sent out 
by the Smithsonian Institution. He landed in East 
Africa, made his way into the interior, and thence to 
the sources of the Nile, after a trip in every way suc- 
cessful, both in exploration and in pursuit of big game. 

112 



Theodore Roosevelt 

He then canie down the Nile through Eg>-pt and thence 
to Europe, and no private citizen of the United States — 
probably no private man of any country — was ever 
received in a manner comparable to that which met 
Roosevelt in every country in Europe which he visited. 
Everywhere it was the same — in Italy, in Germany, in 
France, in England. Every honor was paid to him that 
authority could devise, accompanied by every mark of 
affection and admiration which the people of those 
countries were able to show. He made few speeches 
while in Europe, but in those few he did not fail to give 
to the questions and thought of the time real and gen- 
uine contributions, set forth in plain language, always 
vigorous and often eloquent. He returned in the sum- 
mer of 1910 to the United States and was greeted with 
a reception on his landing in New York quite equaling 
in interest and enthusiasm that which had been given 
to him in Europe. 

For two years afterwards he devoted himself to 
writing, not only articles as contributing editor of The 
Outlook, but books of his own and addresses and speeches 
which he was constantly called upon to make. No man 
in private hfe probably ever had such an audience as 
he addressed, whether with tongue or pen, upon the 
questions of the day, with a constant refrain as to the 
qualities necessary to make men both good citizens and 
good Americans. In the spring of 1912 he decided to 
become a candidate for the Republican nomination for 
the presidency, and a very heated struggle followed 
between himself and President Taft for delegations to 
the convention. The convention when it assem.bled in 

113 



Theodore Roosevelt 

Chicago was the stormiest ever known in our history. 
President Taft was renominated, most of the Roosevelt 
delegates refusing to vote, and a large body of Repub- 
licans thereupon formed a new party called the " Pro- 
gressive" and nominated Mr. Roosevelt as their candi- 
date. This division into two nearly equal parts of the 
Republican party, which had elected Mr. Roosevelt and 
Mr. Taft in succession by the largest majorities ever 
known, made the victory of the Democratic candidate 
absolutely certain. Colonel Roosevelt, however, stood 
second in the poll, receiving 4,119,507 votes, carrying 
six states and winning eighty -eight electoral votes. There 
never has been in political history, when all conditions 
are considered, such an exhibition of extraordinary per- 
sonal strength. To have secured eighty-eight electoral 
votes when his own party was hopelessly divided, with 
no great historic party name and tradition behind him, 
with an organization which had to be hastily brought 
together in a few weeks, seems almost incredible, and 
in all his career there is no display of the strength of 
his hold upon the people equal to this. 

In the following year he yielded again to the long- 
ing for adventure and exploration. Going to South 
America, he made his way up through Paraguay and 
western Brazil, and then across a trackless wilderness of 
jungle and dowTi an unlmown river into the valley of 
the Amazon. It was a remarkable expedition and car- 
ried him through what is probably the most deadly 
climate in the world. He suffered severely from the 
fever, the poison of which never left him and which 
finally shortened his life. 

114 



Theodore Roosevelt 

In the next year the great war began, and Colonel 
Roosevelt threw himself into it with all the energy of 
his nature. With Major Gardner he led the great fight 
for preparedness in a country utterly unprepared. He 
saw very plainly that in all human probability it would 
be impossible for us to keep out of the war. Therefore 
in season and out of season he demanded that we should 
make ready. He and Major Gardner, with the others 
who joined them, roused a widespread and powerful 
sentiment in the country, but there was no practical 
effect on the army. The navy was the single place 
where anything was really done, and that only in the 
bill of 1916, so that war finally came upon us as unready 
as Roosevelt had feared we should be. Yet the cam- 
paign he made was not in vain, for in addition to the 
question of preparation he spoke earnestly of other things, 
other burning questions, and he always spoke to an 
enormous body of listeners everywhere. He would have 
had us protest and take action at the very beginning, 
in 1914, when Belgium was invaded. He would have 
had us go to war when the murders of the Lusilania 
were perpetrated. He tried to stir the soul and rouse 
the spirit of the American people, and despite every 
obstacle he did awaken them, so that when the hour 
came, in April, 1917, a large proportion of the Ameri- 
can people were even then ready in spirit and in hope. 
How telling his work had been was proved by the con- 
fession of his country's enemies, for when he died the only 
discordant note, the only harsh words, came from the 
German press. Germany knew whose voice it was that 
more powerfully than any other had called Americans 

115 



Theodore Roosevelt 

to the battle in behalf of freedom and civilization, where 
the advent of the armies of the United States gave 
victory to the cause of justice and righteousness. 

When the United States went to war Colonel Roose- 
velt's one desire was to be allowed to go to the fighting 
line. There if fate had laid its hand upon him it would 
have found him glad to fall in the trenches or in a charge 
at the head of his men, but it was not permitted to him 
to go, and thus he was denied the reward which he 
would have ranked above all others, " the great prize 
of death in battle." But he was a patriot in every fiber 
of his being, and personal disappointment in no manner 
slackened or cooled his zeal. Everything that he could 
do to forward the war, to quicken preparation, to stim- 
ulate patriotism, to urge on efficient action, was done. 
Day and night, in season and out of season, he never 
ceased his labors. Although prevented from going to 
France himself, he gave to the great conflict that which 
was far dearer to him than his own life. I can not say 
that he sent his four sons, because they all went at once, 
as everyone knew that their father's sons would go. 
Two have been badly wounded; one was killed. He 
met the blow with the most splendid and unflinching 
courage, met it as Siward, the Earl of Northumberland, 
receives in the play the news of his son's death: 

Siw. Had he his hurts before? 

Ross. Ay, on the front. 

Siw. Why, then, God's soldier be he! 

Had I as many sons as I have hairs, 
I would not wish them to a fairer death: 
And so his knell is knoU'd. 



116 



Theodore Roosevelt 

Among the great tragedies of Shakespeare, and there 
are none greater in all the literature of man, Macbeth 
was Colonel Roosevelt's favorite, and the moving words 
which I have just quoted I am sure were in his heart 
and on his lips when he faced with stern resolve and 
self-control the anguish brought to him by the death of 
his youngest boy, killed in the glory of a brave and 
brilliant youth. 

He lived to see the right prevail; he lived to see 
civilization triumph over organized barbarism; and there 
was great joy in his heart. In all his last days the 
thoughts which filled his mind were to secure a peace 
which should render Germany forever harmless and 
advance the cause of ordered freedom in every land 
and among every race. This occupied him to the exclu- 
sion of everything else, except what he called and what 
we like to call Americanism. There was no hour down 
to the end when he would not turn aside from every- 
thing else to preach the doctrine of Americanism, of the 
principles and the faith upon wliich American govern- 
ment rested, and which all true Americans should wear 
in their heart of hearts. He was a great patriot, a great 
man; above all, a great American. His country was the 
ruling, mastering passion of his life from the beginning 
even unto the end. 

So closes the inadequate, most incomplete accoimt 
of a life full of work done and crowded with achieve- 
ment, brief in years and prematurely ended. The reci- 
tation of tlie offices which he held and of some of the 
deeds that he did is but a bare, imperfect catalogue 
into which history when we are gone will breathe a 

117 



Theodore Roosevelt 

lasting life. Here today it is only a background, and 
that which most concerns us now is what the man was 
of whose deeds done it is possible to make such a list. 
What a man was is ever more important than what he did, 
because it is upon what he was that all his achievement 
depends and his value and meaning to his fellow men 
must finally rest. 

Theodore Roosevelt always believed that character 
was of greater worth and moment than anything else. 
He possessed abilities of the first order, which he was 
disposed to imderrate, because he set so much greater 
store upon the moral qualities which we bring together 
under the single word " character." 

Let me speak first of his abilities. He had a power- 
ful, well-trained, ever-active mind. He thought clearly, 
independently, and with originality and imagination. 
These priceless gifts were sustained by an extraordi- 
nary power of acquisition, joined to a greater quickness 
of apprehension, a greater swiftness in seizing upon the 
essence of a question, than I have ever happened to see 
in any other man. His reading began with natural 
history, then went to general history, and thence to the 
whole field of literature. He had a capacity for con- 
centration which enabled him to read with remarkable 
rapidity anything which he took up, if only for a moment, 
and which separated him for the time being from every- 
thing going on about him. The subjects upon which he 
was well and widely informed would, if enumerated, fill 
a large space, and to this power of acquisition was united 
not only a tenacious but an extraordinary, accurate 
memory. It was never safe to contest with him on any 

118 



Theodore Roosevelt 

question of fact or figures, whether they related to the 
ancient Assyrians or to the present-day conditions of the 
tribes of central Africa, to the Syracusan Expedition, as 
told by Thucydides, or to protective coloring in birds and 
animals. He knew and held details always at command, 
but he was not mastered by them. He never failed 
to see the forest on account of the trees or the city on 
account of the houses. 

He made himself a writer, not only of occasional 
addresses and essays, but of books. He had the trained 
thoroughness of the historian, as he showed in his 
" HisloTy of the War of 1812 " and of the " Winning 
of the West," and nature had endowed him with that 
most enviable of gifts, the faculty of narrative and the 
art of the teller of tales. He knew how to weigh evi- 
dence in the historical scales and how to depict character. 
He learned to write with great ease and fluency. He 
was always vigorous, always energetic, always clear and 
forcible in everything he wrote — nobody could ever 
misunderstand him — and when he allowed himself time 
and his feelings were deeply engaged he gave to the world 
many pages of beauty as well as power, not only in 
thought but in form and style. At the same time he 
made himself a public speaker, and here again, through 
a practice probably unequaled in amount, he became 
one of the most effective in all our history. In speaking, 
as in writing, he was always full of force and energy; 
he drove home his arguments and never was misunder- 
stood. In many of his more carefully prepared addresses 
are to be found passages of impressive eloquence, touched 
with imagination and instinct with grace and feeling. 

119 



Theodore Roosevelt 

He had a large capacity for administration, clear- 
ness of vision, promptness in decision, and a thorough 
apprehension of what constituted efficient organization. 
All the vast and varied work which he accomplished 
could not have been done unless he had had most 
exceptional natural abilities, but behind them, most 
important of all, was the driving force of an intense 
energy and the ever-present belief that a man could 
do what he willed to do. As he made himself an athlete, 
a horseman, a good shot, a bold explorer, so he made 
himself an exceptionally successful writer and speaker. 
Only a most abnormal energy would have enabled him 
to enter and conquer in so many fields of intellectual 
achievement. But something more than energy and 
determination is needed for the largest success, especially 
in the world's high places. The first requisite of leader- 
ship is ability to lead, and that ability Theodore Roosevelt 
possessed in full measure. Whether in a game or in 
the hunting field, in a fight or in politics, he sought 
the front, where, as Webster once remarked, there is 
always plenty of room for those who can get there. 
His instinct was always to say " com.e " rather than 
" go," and he had the talent of command. 

His also was the rare gift of arresting attention 
sharply and suddenly, a very precious attribute, and 
one easier to illustrate than to describe. This arresting 
power is like a common experience, which we have all 
had on entering a picture gallery, of seeing at once and 
before all others a single picture among the many on 
the walls. For a moment you see nothing else, although 
you may be surrounded with masterpieces. In that 

120 



Theodore Roosevelt 

particular picture lurks a strange, capturing, gripping 
fascination as impalpable as it is unmistakable. Roose- 
velt had this same arresting, fascinating quality. 
Whether in the Legislature at Albany, the civil service 
commission at Washington, or the police commission in 
New York, whether in the Spanish War or on the plains 
among the cowboys, he was always vivid, at times start- 
ling, never to be overlooked. Nor did this power stop here. 
He not only without effort or intention drew the eager 
attention of the people to himself, he could also engage 
and fax their thoughts upon anything which happened 
to interest him. It might be a man or a book, reformed 
spelling or some large historical question, his traveling 
library or the military preparation of the United States, 
he had but to say, " See how interesting, how important, 
is this man or this event," and thousands, even millions, 
of people would reply, " We never thought of this before, 
but it certainly is one of the most interesting, most 
absorbing things in the world." He touched a subject 
and it suddenly began to glow as when the high-power 
electric cvirrent touches the metal and the white light 
starts forth and dazzles the onlooking eyes. We know 
the air played by the Pied Piper of Hamelin no better 
than we know why Theodore Roosevelt thus drew the 
interest of men after him. We only know they followed 
wherever his insatiable activity of mind invited them. 
Men follow also most readily a leader who is always 
there before them, clearly visible and just where they 
expect him. They are especially eager to go forward 
with a man who never sounds a retreat. Roosevelt 
was always advancing, always struggling to make things 

121 



Theodore Roosevelt 

better, to carry some much-needed reform, and help 
humanity to a larger chance, to a fairer condition, to 
a happier life. Moreover, he looked always for an 
ethical question. He was at his best when he was 
fighting the battle of right against wrong. He thought 
soundly and wisely upon questions of expediency or 
of political economy, but they did not rouse him or 
bring him the absorbed interest of the eternal conflict 
between good and evil. Yet he was never impractical, 
never blinded by counsels of perfection, never seeking 
to make the better the enemy of the good. He wished 
to get the best, but he would strive for all that was 
possible even if it fell short of the highest at which he 
aimed. He studied the lessons of history, and did not 
think the past bad simply because it was the past, or 
the new good solely because it was new. He sought to 
try all questions on their intrinsic merits, and that 
was why he succeeded in advancing, in making govern- 
ment and society better, where others, who would be 
content with nothing less than an abstract perfection, 
failed. He would never compromise a principle, but 
he was eminently tolerant of honest differences of 
opinion. He never hesitated to give generous credit 
where credit seemed due, whether to friend or opponent, 
and in this way he gathered recruits and yet never lost 
adherents. 

The criticism most commonly made upon Theodore 
Roosevelt was that he was impulsive and impetuous; 
that he acted without thinking. He would have been 
the last to claim infallibility. His head did not turn 
when fame came to him and choruses of admiration 

122 



Theodore Roosevelt 

sounded in his ears, for he was neither vain nor credu- 
lous. He knew that he made mistakes, and never hesi- 
tated to admit them to be mistakes and to correct them 
or put them behind him when satisfied that they were 
such. But he wasted no time in mourning, explaining, 
or vainly regretting them. It is also true that the 
middle way did not attract him. He was apt to go far, 
both in praise and censure, although nobody could 
analyze qualities and balance them justly in judging 
men better than he. He felt strongly, and as he had 
no concealments of any kind, he expressed himself in 
like manner. But vehemence is not violence, nor is 
earnestness anger, which a very wise man defined as a 
brief madness. It was all according to his nature, just 
as his eager cordiality in meeting men and women, his 
keen interest in otlier people's cares or joys, was not 
assumed, as some persons thought who did not know 
him. It was all profoundly natural, it was all real, 
and in that way and in no other was he able to meet 
and greet his fellow men. He spoke out with the most 
unrestrained frankness at all times and in all companies. 
Not a day passed in the presidency when he was not 
guilty of what the trained diplomatist would call indis- 
cretions. But the frankness had its own reward. There 
never was a president whose confidence was so respected 
or with whom the barriers of honor which surround 
private conversation were more scrupulously observed. 
At the same time, when the public interest required, 
no man could be more wisely reticent. He was apt, 
it is true, to act suddenly and decisively, but it was 
a complete mistake to suppose that he therefore acted 

123 



Theodore Roosevelt 

without thought or merely on a momentary impulse. 
When he had made up his mind he was resolute and 
unchanging, but he made up his mind only after much 
reflection, and there never was a president in the White 
House who consulted not only friends but political 
opponents and men of all kinds and conditions more 
than Theodore Roosevelt. When he had reached his 
conclusion he acted quickly and drove hard at his object, 
and this it was, probably, which gave an impression that 
he acted sometimes hastily and thoughtlessly, which was 
a complete misapprehension of the man. His action 
was emphatic, but emphasis implies reflection not 
thoughtlessness. One can not even emphasize a word 
without a process, however slight, of mental 
differentiation. 

The feeling that he was impetuous and impulsive 
was also due to the fact that in a sudden, seemingly 
vinexpected crisis he would act with great rapidity. 
This happened when he had been for weeks, perhaps 
for months, considering what he should do if such a 
crisis arose. He always believed that one of the most 
important elements of success, whether in public or in 
private life, was to know what one meant to do under 
given circumstances. If he saw the possibility of 
perilous questions arising, it was his practice to think 
over carefully just how he would act under certain 
contingencies. Many of the contingencies never arose. 
Now and then a contingency became an actuality, and 
then he was ready. He knew what he meant to do, he 
acted at once, and some critics considered him 
impetuous, impulsive, and, therefore, dangerous, because 

124 



Theodore Roosevelt 

they did not know that he had thought the question all 
out beforehand. 

Very many people, powerful elements in tlie com- 
munity, regarded him at one time as a dangerous radical, 
bent upon overthrowing all the safeguards of society and 
planning to tear out the foundations of an ordered liberty. 
As a matter of fact, what Theodore Roosevelt was trying 
to do was to strengthen American society and American 
govenunent by demonstrating to the American people 
that he was aiming at a larger economic equality and 
a more generous industrial opportunity for all men, 
and that any combination of capital or of business, wliich 
threatened the control of the government by the people 
who made it, was to be curbed and resisted, just as 
he would have resisted an enemy who tried to take 
possession of the city of Washington. He had no 
hostility to a man because he had been successful in 
business or because he had accumulated a fortune. 
If the man had been honestly successful and used his 
fortune wisely and beneficently, he was regarded by 
Theodore Roosevelt as a good citizen. The vulgar 
hatred of wealth found no place in his heart. He had 
but one standard, one test, and that was whether a 
man, rich or poor, was an honest man, a good citizen, 
and a good American. He tried men, whether they 
were men of "big business" or members of a labor 
union, by their deeds, and m no other way. The tyranny 
of anarchy and disorder, such as is now desolating Russia, 
was as hateful to him as any other tyranny, whether 
it came from an autocratic system like that of Germany 
Of from the misuse of organized capital. Personally he 

125 



Theodore Roosevelt 

believed in every man earning his own living, and he 
earned money and was glad to do so; but he had no 
desire or taste for mailing money, and he was entirely 
indifferent to it. The siniplest of men in his own habits, 
the only thing he really would have liked to have done 
with ample wealth would have been to give freely to 
the many good objects which continually interested 
him. 

Theodore Roosevelt's power, however, and the main 
source of all his achievement, was not in the offices 
which he held, for those offices were to him only oppor- 
tunities, but in the extraordinary hold which he established 
and retained over great bodies of men. He had the 
largest personal following ever attained by any man 
in our history. I do not mean by this the following 
which comes from great political office or from party 
candidacy. There have been many men who have held 
the highest offices in our history by the votes of their 
fellow countrymen who have never had anything more 
than a very small personal following. By personal 
following is meant here that which supports and sustains 
and goes with a man simply because he is himself; a 
following which does not care whether their leader and 
chief is in office or out of office, which is with him and 
behind liim because they, one and all, believe in him 
and love liim and are ready to stand by him for the sole 
and simple reason that they have perfect faith that he 
will lead them where they wish and where they ought 
to go. This following Theodore Roosevelt had, as 
I have said, in a larger degree than anyone in our history, 
and the fact that he had it and what he did with it for 

126 



Theodore Roosevelt 

the welfare of his fellow men have given him his great 
place and his lasting fame. 

This is not mere assertion; it was demonstrated, as 
I have already pointed out, by the vote of 1912, and at 
all times, from the day of his accession to the presi- 
dency onward, there were millions of people in this 
country ready to follow Theodore Roosevelt and vote 
for him, or do anything else that he wanted, whenever 
he demanded their support or raised his standard. It 
was this great mass of support among the people, and 
which probably was never larger than in these last 
years, that gave him his immense influence upon public 
opinion, and public opinion was the weapon which 
he used to carry out all the policies which he wished to 
bring to fulfillment and to consolidate all the achieve- 
ments upon which he had set his heart. This extra- 
ordinary popular strength was not given to him solely 
because the people knew him to be honest and brave, 
because they were certain that physical fear was an 
emotion unknown to him, and that his moral courage 
equaled the physical. It was not merely because they 
thoroughly believed him to be sincere. All this knowl- 
edge and belief, of course, went to making his popular 
leadership secure; but there was much more in it than 
that, something that went deeper, basic elements which 
were not upon the surface which were due to qualities 
of temperament interwoven with his very being, 
inseparable from him and yet subtle rather than obvious 
in their effects. 

All men admire courage, and that he possessed in 
the highest degree. But he had also something larger 

127 



Theodore Roosevelt 

and rarer than courage, in the ordinary acceptation 
of the word. When an assassin shot him at Milwaukee 
he was severely v/ounded; how severely he could not 
tell, but it might well have been mortal. He went on 
to the great meeting awaiting him and there, bleeding, 
suffering, ignorant of his fate, but still unconquered, 
made his speech and went from the stage to the hospital. 
What bore him up was the dauntless spirit which could 
rise victorious over pain and darkness and the unknown 
and meet the duty of the hour as if all were well. A 
spirit like this awakens in all men more than admira- 
tion, it kindles affection and appeals to every generous 
impulse. 

Very different, but equally compelling, was another 
quality. There is nothing in human beings at once 
so sane and so sympathetic as a sense of humor. This 
great gift the good fairies conferred upon Theodore 
Roosevelt at his birth in unstinted measure. No man 
ever had a more abundant sense of humor — joyous, 
irrepressible humor — and it never deserted him. Even 
at the most serious and even perilous moments if there 
was a gleam of humor anywhere he saw it and rejoiced 
and helped himself with it over the rough places and in 
the dark hour. He loved fun, loved to joke and chaff, 
and, what is more uncommon, greatly enjoyed being 
chaffed himself. His ready smile and contagious laugh 
made countless friends and saved him from many an 
enmity. Even more generally effective than his humor, 
and yet allied to it, was the universal knowledge that 
Roosevelt had no secrets from the American people. 

Yet another quality — perhaps the most engag- 

128 



Theodore Roosevelt 

ing of all — was his homely, generous humanity which 
enabled him to speak directly to the primitive instincts 
of man. 

He dwelt with the tribes of the marsh and moor, 

He sate at the board of kings; 
He tasted the toil of the burdened slave 

And the joy that triumph brings. 
But whether to jungle or palace hall 

Or white-walled tent he came. 
He was brother to king and soldier and slave. 

His welcome was the same. 

He was very human and intensely American, and 
this knit a bond between him and the American people 
which nothing could ever break. And then he had yet 
one more attraction, not so impressive, perhaps, as the 
others, but none the less very important and very 
captivating. He never by any chance bored the American 
people. They might laugh at him or laugh with him, 
they might like what he said or dislike it, they might 
agree with him or disagree with him, but they were 
never wearied of him, and he never failed to interest 
them. He was never heavy, laborious, or dull. If he 
had made any effort to be always interesting and enter- 
taining he would have failed and been tiresome. He 
was unfailingly attractive because he was always per- 
fectly nattiral and his own vinconscious self. And so all 
these things combined to give him his hold upon the 
American people, not only upon their minds, but upon 
their hearts and their instincts, which nothing could ever 
weaken, and v/hich made him one of the most remark- 
able, as he was one of the strongest, characters that 
the history of popular government can show. He was 

129 



Theodore Roosevelt 

also — and this is very revealing and explanatory, too, 
of his vast popularity — a man of ideals. He did not 
expose them daily on the roadside with language fluttering 
about them like the Thibetan who ties his slip of paper to 
the prayer wheel whirling in the wind. He kept his 
ideals to himself until the hour of fulfillment arrived. 
Some of them were the dreams of boyhood, from which 
he never departed, and which I have seen him carry out 
shyly and yet thoroughly and with intense personal 
satisfaction. 

He had a touch of the knight errant in his daily life, 
although he would never have admitted it; but it was 
there. It was not visible in the medieval form of shining 
armor and dazzling tournaments, but in the never-ceasing 
effort to help the poor and the oppressed, to defend and 
protect women and children, to right the wronged 
and succor the downtrodden. Passing by on the other 
side was not a mode of travel through Ufa ever possible 
to him ; and yet he was as far distant from the professional 
philanthropist as could well be imagined, for all he 
tried to do to help his fellow men he regarded as part 
of the day's work to be done and not talked about. 
No man ever prized sentiment or hated sentimentality 
more than he. He preached unceasingly the familiar 
morals which lie at the bottom of both family and public 
life. The blood of some ancestral Scotch covenanter or 
of some Dutch reformed preacher facing the tyranny of 
Philip of Spain was in his veins, and with his large 
opportunities and his vast audiences he was always 
ready to appeal for justice and righteousness. But his 
own personal ideals he never attempted to thrust upon 

130 



Theodore Roosevelt 

the world until the day came when they were to be 
translated into realities of action. 

When the future historian traces Theodore Roose- 
velt's extraordinary career he will find these embodied 
ideals planted like milestones along the road over which 
he marched. They never left him. His ideal of public 
service was to be found in his life, and as his life drew 
to its close he had to meet his ideal of sacrifice face to 
face. All his sons went from him to the war, and one 
was killed upon the field of honor. Of all the ideals 
that Uft men up, the hardest to fulfill is the ideal of 
sacrifice. Theodore Roosevelt met it as he had all 
others and fulfilled it to the last jot of its terrible 
demands. His country asked the sacrifice and he gave 
it with solemn pride and uncomplaining lips. 

This is not the place to speak of his private life, 
but within that sacred circle no man was ever more 
blessed in the utter devotion of a noble wife and the 
passionate love of his children. The absolute purity 
and beauty of his family life tell us why the pride and 
interest which his fellow countrymen felt in him were 
always touched with the warm light of love. In the 
home so dear to him, in his sleep, death came, and — 

So Valiant-for-Truth passed over and all the trumpets sounded for 
him on the other side. 



131 



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